


I am Come Home

by Rhobot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Season/Series 13, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Undeath, Pre-Relationship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12684483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhobot/pseuds/Rhobot
Summary: Why are you weepingyou saidYour hands on my doorway like rainbowsFollowing rainWhy are you weeping?I am come home.It's the aftermath: Lucifer is gone. Mary is gone. Castiel is-- He's gone, too. All that's left is a baby that is not a baby, and grief stretching out, longer than the long road back to the home that is a less of a home now. All that's left is to carry on, and Jack - first nephilim, then Jack, then Jack Winchester - must learn this too.But there are other truths to learn.Especially the one about how Winchesters don't tend to stay dead.





	I am Come Home

**Author's Note:**

> This was a six-month labor of love, one that would not leave me alone until I finished it. Thank goodness for that, because I am so proud right now.
> 
> & I thought I would never, ever say this in my life and mean it, but I wanted a baby. Specifically, a half-angel half-human baby, and I know, blah-blah, baby actors are expensive and fragile and whatever, but still. Would've been beautiful. 
> 
> So this is my Season 13, and I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading :)

Part I

Why Are You Weeping?

 

The kid still holds himself too stiffly, as if his human half hasn’t quite caught up on what he is, tugged from pudgy, water-eyed newborn to the awkward and constant growth of childhood; he’s five months old this Wednesday, but he looks like a nine year old. His mind is quick and clever and there’s something undeniably ancient there, all crackling power and light beneath the surface; he’s so young and so old all at once.

 _Chained to a comet_ , Dean can’t help but think, and with the thought comes the twinge of the hurt that hasn’t quite healed over. If time heals all wounds – and he isn’t convinced; he’s lost far, far too much – it will take more time than this.

But the sun is shining, still warm on the spines of the Kansas grass, golden with late autumn, and Jack’s bright eyes – blessedly more Kelly than his father – are watching expectantly, waiting. Dean breathes in, deep and slow.

“Alright kiddo, go long.”

He snaps the ball through the air and it sails, arcing over the field. The moment it leaves his hand Jack is gone, vanishing in a rustle of feathers. And there’s the sting, and the way Dean’s heart drops, even as Jack reappears, beaming, pale brown hair windswept, hands reaching up and out, toward the ball, and to the sky and the morning light beyond it.

The sight and sound of wings, Dean suspects, will always ache of absence.

\-- 

Then

Cries pierce the stillness of the night, and Dean’s heart cracks further under the weight of the wails of a motherless child, whose savior and friend is lying far too still on the wet sand.

He knows he needs to get up, needs to go to Sam, needs to move and to deal with this, but he remains where he is, cold damp seeping up through the denim to his knees. He can’t look at the body, can’t look at the open, empty space where his mother disappeared, and so he looks down at his hands instead.

He can’t close his eyes. Every time he tries it’s nothing but the searing flash of light, and it tears jagged lines inside his chest; some part of him hasn’t stopped screaming _No_ ever since the blade pierced through Castiel like he was nothing, as if after _everything_ that could be all it took to take him away; no blaze of glory, just the final blaze of grace after being stabbed in the back by his own brother, and Dean can’t help but feel, as his eyes prick and burn, that he’s in some part culpable; isn’t… _wasn’t_ … it the story of Castiel’s life, backstabbed by family?

“You stupid…son of a bitch.” Dean’s voice breaks apart like skin crashing on stone, and he’s not sure if he’s saying those words to himself or to the body beside him. The breaking of his voice breaks the walls he’s desperately trying to shove up, and his dry eyes flood; the dam crumbles; his mom is gone and Cas is gone and he’d only just gotten them _back, goddammit_ ; he’d had them all in one place, and they’d had a plan, and they were going to win and go _home,_ all of them, and…

His sobs are ugly, messy things that feel endless, as if the nephilim screwed up time and Dean has spent an eternity weeping on his knees feeling so, so small. His helpless hands reach out at last and, fumbling, grab onto one of Cas’ hands, and it’s so cold and it’s so still and Dean’s stomach roils like a sailor adrift at sea in a storm, alone, overcome by the infinite, merciless depths of the cresting waves.

There are wings burnt into the sand. Fragile, ragged things and Dean didn’t even _know,_ hadn’t asked, even after Benjamin, after Muriel and Ishim and their gap-feathered wings singed onto the wall, onto the sidewalk and the floor of an abandoned church. He can’t even remember the last time he’d seen Castiel’s wings, all their dark and outstretched glory, the _awe_ of them; the reminder that his best friend was ancient and alien and _holy_.

And now, Dean sees them in their sooty imprints in the sand; when angels die there’s light and heat and the echo of wings; Castiel was a Winchester through and through, and to be dead and back again was family tradition. But there is too much finality this time.

Years ago this kind of closure was what he’d wanted; he’d thought it would make it easier: a body to burn and to bury, something more than a bloody molar or a stained and waterlogged coat. Something more than an empty hand.

He aches for that all that terrible, awful hope the other deaths had offered him.

He opens his mouth to speak, to curse or to pray or to beg, but all that comes out on the uptick of breath between the sobs that choke their way out of him is the hoarse whisper of the nickname he’d given to an angel; an angel who became best friend, who became family, who was— who could’ve been— it’s _Cas_ , _Cas_ , again, again, and again _._

There’s so much he didn’t say and now it’s too late.

\--

Now 

The sun is warm on his face and the long grass rustles soft and singing in the breeze. He can see the light through his eyelids, all red and hot and alive. His palms press into the dry crumble of the soil, down below his body the roots and the creatures of the earth live and thrive. This world is good. He breathes, softly, evenly, and because he needs to; despite his uniqueness he is like every other living thing and must participate in this great communion, of the drawing in and the letting out.

Jack’s eyes open, squinting against the afternoon light, and sits up from his rest in the wheat-gold grass at the sound of something picking its way by. A young deer, white spots scattered on amber-russet fur, ears swiveling wide, turns its black, wet eyes to him. It freezes, scenting the air, legs trembling. Jack extends a measure of peace to it, head dipping in a small bow. The fawn eases, and Jack slowly climbs to his feet, one hand outstretched and his breath held, heart thumping with wonder as the fawn leans forward to sniff his fingers. It draws back and bleats at him, a strange, sad cry.

It takes to its light feet and trots towards the treeline, stopping and swinging its head back around and bleating again, high and desperate. Its white tail flashes in the afternoon sun. _You must follow,_ it says. It doesn’t actually speak; it’s too young, but Jack interprets the wavelengths of its distress as a request for aid and pads after it.

The woods hum with the songs of insects, the quick-chirp calls of birds. Jack steps into the leafy undergrowth, passes the slow-healing cuts on the trunk of a tree; the sigil’s magic still thrums softly in his ear, a low resonance like the memory of a hand on a shoulder.

His keen eyes follow the spotted coat of the fawn as it picks its way through the greens and yellows. He knows these woods; he's spent hours roaming them when he feels too big and restless for his form, trying to burn off the energy that blazes sun-like inside him.

So he knows this slope, when he comes to it. He follows the fawn through a small, familiar gap in the brush, brambled branches pulling at his clothes, pricking cuts in his skin that heal as soon as they’re made. He slides down to the bottom of the ditch just shy of the thread-thin creek; balance is easily kept when you've got a large pair of wings upon your back. The little deer bleats at him, again, guiding him to the right, around a shallow bend, past a stout and hardy shrub that’s fate is to be torn away next rain-season.

The smell of death hits him like a punch to the stomach, and for a moment the bright red of the blood smeared on the small stones is all he can see. He is no stranger to death, yet he is not its acquaintance either.

The fawn is standing at the head of its mother, sniffing her forehead, above her sightless and glassy eyes. Her great chest is still. Jack’s feathers shift and tremble like rattle-dead leaves on a baring tree; he could wing away from here, go back home, stamp this image out of his mind and forget. His eyes lock to the gunshot wound in the doe’s side and knows that _someone_ is responsible; he floods with the sudden knowledge that he could hunt them down, show them what has been done and make them pay for it. Make them bleed, make their flesh and their bones return to the earth.

He’s startled by the depths of this vengeance, enough that he remains where he is. He hardly realizes his eyes are closed until something chilled and wet pushes against his closed fist, and he opens his eyes to look down at the orphaned fawn nudging his hand.

Something else awakens in him, unfurling softer and more golden then fear, not as strong as vengeance but building and promising, perhaps, to be something greater.  

His wings loosen from their tight and uncertain position, arcing around him, and he steps forward. He has a vague sense of the fawn standing off to the side, a little ways behind him. Waiting. Watching, as Jack kneels by the too-quiet form of its mother.

Jack closes his eyes and drops down within the well of himself. It’s hazy at first, blurred and shifting and hard to grasp onto. He exhales, slowly, then draws a breath back in. The lines of power, his and the life of the world around him, sharpen and become tangible. Something he can wield. _Grace_ , Sam and Dean call it. There’s an older word for it, one in a pre-time tongue that he knows instinctively, down past the bones of himself, one that he could never begin to voice in the confines of his flesh-and-mortal form. 

He presses his palms against the soft fur of the cooling chest, traces the lines back to where her heart used to beat, her heart larger than his fist, and strong. The bullet is a black void in his awareness, and the acrid taste of metal and sulfur and charcoal stain his tongue. It’s a _wrongness_ , and he feels it down to the very core of him. He forces himself to take a deep breath as the anger surges again; he soothes it, pushes it aside when it’s quiet again.

The bullet must go, and so it does; he breaks it down to its parts and scatters the atoms away; he returns it to nature, to the wide scatter of life so that it might do some good. He turns to the wound, then, and this is easy, natural. All the light inside him makes him a healer, and he knits together the muscle, the veins, the workings of the heart and the skin to make the body whole again.

His eyes still closed, he surveys his work and finds it good.

 _Mother, come back_.

The calling words shock him, leave him gasping on an inhale even as the power flows out of him, coursing through his hands and spilling into the doe; it’s electric and golden and warm and he regains his balance, focusing, aiming and coaxing at the great heart, laying out a pattern from his own heart, singing out the steady thumps of blood and oxygen that carry life onwards.

There’s a sound like a strong wind and Jack grins as the doe’s chest pushes his hands up; he feels her heart regain its rhythm and she shudders as the life pours back into her, pushes through her veins. After a moment she huffs and struggles to stand on the stiff wobble of her legs, and Jack braces her until he’s sure she won’t fall. She’s alive, and Jack steps back and marvels at what he has done.

The fawn bounds past him, a happy cry sounding from its small form, and the doe nuzzles it, licking its forehead before swinging her head up and around to Jack. They’re almost of a height; she is slightly taller, her eyes black and deep as wells. She knows the old unspoken tongue, the words before man, and she meets Jack’s eyes and calmly and insistently. She offers one word, tinged in awe and gratitude.

_Lightbringer._

Branches snap and leaves rustle, and the deer and her fawn bound through the woods, vanishing from sight before Jack realizes that the _No!_ that ripped through him was spoken aloud, shouted, spooking the deer into flight. “ _No_!” He cries again, even though they’re long gone. “Don’t call me that! No, no, _please_ no—”

He takes flight on instinct, arriving at the back door of the bunker. He places his shaking hand on the handle but jerks it back, spinning away to face the field and the distant trees, trying to catch his breath, trying to ground his place in the world. He can’t go inside, not while he’s wild-eyed and panting, wings arced defensively from their invisible place behind him. He can’t answer Sam and Dean’s questions, can’t take the comfort they would freely and gladly give, not with the charred name the doe had whispered to him hovering over him, choking at his heart. _Ol iolci olpirt. To bring light. Lightbringer._

_Lucifer._

\--

Then

Dean doesn’t notice him until he places a hand on his shoulder. The nephilim has quieted down for now, and is looking up at the world from the crook of one of Sam’s arms; wide eyes blinking at slow intervals. He’s so much smaller than it seems right for him to be. After all this the child of Satan – _Jack, his mother named him Jack_ , Sam reminds himself – weighs maybe six pounds and can’t form a single word or walk. Sam doubts that they’d be able to discern him from any other infant. 

Dean doesn’t react except to lean back against Sam’s hand, and Sam doesn’t let go. Dean doesn’t look away from Cas’ body. Sam can hardly bear to either, but he can’t stand looking more; saliva floods his mouth and he fights the nausea with every exhausted scrap of willpower he can muster to the task – vomiting while holding a baby isn’t ideal. The tears aren’t something he holds back. They flow freely down his face, for his mom and for his brother and for his friend who was his brother too; for all that they’ve lost, and for more than that: for himself and all that he’s lost, all that could’ve been, all that was shredded by time and the monstrous and the dark.

He lets a breath puff out into the cold night air and he lets Dean kneel over Cas, hands gripping one of Cas’ so tightly his knuckles are white. And Sam knows. He’s always known.

He also knows that moving from here will mean accepting that Castiel is gone for good this time; he knows that moving will mean moving on. Or, at least, trying to move on.

So they stay.

Until the sun breaks gold and pink over the mountains, glittering the stillness of the lake into a pane of stained glass. The nephilim – _Jack_ , he reminds himself again – sleeps. Sam breathes in, slowly – in, holding, and then out. He clears his throat. “Dean,” he says. Even the quiet of his voice seems too loud for the stillness.

His brother doesn’t say anything. There’s one long, final moment that feels like waiting for a miracle. _One last miracle, Cas, please, come on. Just one more._

It doesn’t come.

\--

Now

 _Mother, come back_.

It’s as if the words have inflicted a wound, and it stings with every twinge of remembrance. Jack doesn’t know how to heal it. He wonders if such a thing could even be healed.

The sun has dipped down to the crowns of the trees, sinking as the afternoon slips away, and Jack is perched on the hill over the bunker, cross-legged in the grass and wildflowers. He was too restless to return underground; he needs something other than unliving stone surrounding him; he needs the breeze and the blue sky stretching above. He needs to feel small, he thinks. Harmless.

_Lightbringer._

The word rolls, barbed and cutting, through his chest, tearing at the oldest wound. _Lucifer._

Jack cares nothing for him, feels nothing for him – nothing but anger and the sharp electricity of vengeance. He’s seen the scars the twisted archangel left on Sam and Dean, and on the world beyond them. He knows what was lost because of Lucifer, _who_ was lost. Mary Winchester. Castiel. His mother.

Lucifer didn’t intend for Jack to be a gift, or a child. Lucifer wanted him as a weapon. Jack can trace that in the very core of him, where an archangel’s power – _his_ power – blazes. He can feel the echo of Lucifer’s intent at the moment of his conception. He knows that if Lucifer was in the same realm as him, there would be the constant siren-song whisper in his head, urging Jack to join him. To stand beside the monster that murdered his mother. His stomach turns.

Jack plunges his fingers down into the grass, down into the dirt until his hands are buried. The air sings, a sharp whistle-hum that feels like the moment before a lighting strike. He knows his eyes are glowing as he fans his wings out behind him.

He rips open time and space—

The ash-gray world. Hot. Broken—

 _My son_ , croons the voice, immediately turning its attention to him, sly and twisting—

The flap of great wings, and then, Lucifer. Swaggering, smirking. No love in his eyes—

Jack summons the silver-glint of the blade. It’s always seemed too big for his palms but now it fits, and the fang-bared snarl of triumph stretches across on his face, because Lucifer looks surprised—

Surprised because Jack has driven the blade into Lucifer’s gut. A direct conduit for Jack’s power to blaze through, hot and furious and vengeful. Lucifer struggles. His eyes burn red, but Jack’s blaze brighter; his mother’s green glowing gold—

Lucifer’s burnt-out corpse drops like a stone—

Jack gasps, fingers in the earth, snapping back to awareness in his body as it sits on the hill.

He could do all of it, he knows he could. Can feel it in the lines of energy that race and pulse along his human bones. But he doesn’t; not yet.

Instead, he breathes, and he vents all that energy from his small form, slowly and carefully, so as not to turn his home into a smoldering crater. He lets it roll off of him, like water, like gentle waves, until he’s left tired and quiet and still.

Jack opens his eyes and catches the glint of a car on the highway towards the bunker. A familiar shape, one that presses against the last rages of his grace and soothes it. He lifts his hands from the earth and brushes his palms clean against his jeans.

He makes his way down the hill, hopping that last final drop of the overhang of the garage and letting his wings catch him, landing softly before opening the garage door. Claire’s car pulls up a minute later, and she beeps its horn in greeting.

“Hey Jack!” She calls as she steps out.

“Claire!” Jack grins and follows her as she walks to her trunk. “Did you get the ghost?”

“Yep,” Claire says, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Kicked that ghost’s ass.” She grins back at him, closing the trunk. “Where’re your old men at?”

“Inside.” He thumbs over his shoulder to the bunker. “Doing boring shit,” he says, and Claire laughs – he’s not really supposed to swear, but Claire lets him get away with it because she thinks it’s hilarious. “They’re making burgers tonight.”

“Sweet,” Claire says. “What’ve you been doing?”

The images of what was done and left undone flash like the rapid-blink of a lightning storm across his mind’s eye. “Not much,” he says without missing a beat, walking side by side with Claire down the garage stairs.    

Above them, the blooms of a thousand new wildflowers blanket the hill. 

\-- 

Then

The smell of smoke clings to him like a ghost. It cloys to his nostrils as he pushes the gas petal down, nearly to the floor, as if he could somehow outrun it: the scent, and the grief behind it. Dean cranks down the window and the crisp air of the northwestern May morning pours in, but he still can’t breathe.

“Dean,” Sam says, voice low and soft, and Dean clenches his jaw because he doesn’t want to talk about what happened right now. He can’t.

But Sam continues, “The, uh.” He clears his throat and looks down at the sleeping nephilim in his arms. “It’s probably a little cold for the— for Jack.”

That, he’s got words for. “That thing’s got enough juice in it to rip the fabric of space-time, Sam. I doubt it’s gonna catch the common cold.” But a beat passes, and he rolls the window back up. They sit in silence save for the rumble of the engine, the hum of the tires on the road.

“What are we going to do?” Sam asks quietly.

 _What are we going to do?_ The question has been rolling around the numbness in Dean’s head, in soft but urgent repetition. _What are we going to do?_

 _Get Mom back_ , is one answer, but the bitter snarl of _Mom’s dead, ripped apart by Lucifer_ coils in his mind, chokes the words in his throat.

“I mean, our lives really aren’t suited for raising a kid,” Sam continues.

Dean spares only a moment to glance away from the road, meeting his brother’s eyes before looking at the quiet bundle in his arms. He turns back to the long, aching stretch of highway before them, the Impala’s rumbling a comfort faded to the background where he can’t quite reach it. He aches with the weight that only comes from carrying a body.

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean finally replies. “We always do.” He’s right, but the words fall hollow and dull against the windshield.

“We can’t hunt with an infant in tow,” Sam says. “We still have to deal with the mess the Brits left. And not to mention Hell, now that Crowley is gone, and—”

“I know, Sam!” Dean snaps.

Silence falls and out of his periphery Dean watches Sam turn his head to look out the window.

They’re nearly to Portland when Jack makes some sort of gurgling-baby noise that almost has Dean swerving off the road, and then it feels like even the Impala herself is holding her breath, fiercely hoping that the kid’s not going to wake up and start crying or summoning demons or ending the whole damn universe.

But Jack merely stretches out a tiny hand and squirms, eyes still closed, before he snuffles and then seems to fall deeper asleep, his head tilting towards Sam’s chest.

The brothers let out a sigh of relief in unison.

Sam scoffs out a laugh and Dean tosses him a questioning, concerned look.

“We fight monsters almost every week, we’ve been to hell and back again – multiple times – and we’re scared of a _baby_.” 

“It’s not a baby, Sam.” Dean’s insides curl tight and shrink with fear around the great pit of numbness. First Cas got swept up in the thrall of Satan’s unholy spawn and now Sam is skirting that edge, and Dean won’t lose the rest of his family to this thing. He can’t.

Sam is silent, and at first Dean is grateful. But the silence starts to grate at him, starts to wrap around his throat and constrict. He’d be blasting his music if not for the nephilim, something to get him away from the inside of himself; something to buoy himself against this crashing storm of grief.

So when Sam clears his throat to speak, Dean doesn’t mind it so much.

“We aren’t going to kill him, right?” Sam asks quietly.

“Jesus, Sammy, no.” The words are out of his mouth before he has a chance to think about it but, granted, it had crossed his mind. He didn’t realize he’d made a decision until now. “We can’t kill a—” He clenches his jaw. A quick look at his brother reveals a self-satisfied smirk amidst the relief and, okay, maybe Dean isn’t so glad anymore for the break in the silence. “A thing that _looks_ like a baby, alright? It’s the– it’s the principle of the thing.”

Sam nods, and if his hands weren’t full of Lucifer-baby he probably would’ve lifted them in placating surrender.  

“We’ll figure it out,” Dean reiterates. He has to believe it. Besides Sam, it’s all he’s got left.

“We always do,” Sam adds. There isn’t anything left to say after that.

The road is long and Dean cautiously turns the radio on low for some background noise other than the sound of distance being made. The nephilim remains quietly asleep as the odometer counts the miles between Dean and all he’s lost. All he left behind. Sam’s head leans against the window as he nods off.

They’re somewhere in the middle of Idaho when Dean spares a glance at the nephilim. He freezes. Its eyes are open and are calmly regarding him. Studying him. There’s the bright flicker of intelligence in those green eyes, and while they seem mostly curious and empty of malice something worse lingers there: apathy. It hasn’t been affected by any of this, by any of the blood and sacrifices that led to its birth. It could care less. Dean bristles.

He has to turn his attention to the road – empty and falsely carefree in the sunlight. When he looks back at the nephilim, its eyes are closed.

He may not want to kill it, but he doesn’t like it.

He wishes he had enough energy left to hate it. 

\-- 

Now

The grill fires up and the evening air fills with laughter and conversation, drifting over the smell of burgers, the sound of the cicadas whirring in the trees. The sun filters through the warded trees at the border of the property, bouncing off the scarlets and oranges and yellows of the October leaves and casting the sky alight with a landscape of colors.

Claire sits perched on the picnic table, legs dangling over the edge. She’s gushing, more earnestly than she realizes, to Sam about a hunter she’s met and stayed in contact with, a good half-dozen or more hunts ago – a girl her age who’s skilled and quick with humor and even better with a shotgun.

“You should bring her over here for dinner sometime!” Sam suggests, and Claire blushes before attempting brush it off, stammering about how the girl is “probably too busy and stuff.” But there’s a small smile on her lips as she ducks her head to fiddle with her phone, and Jack realizes that the blossoming warmth of fondness that he sees in her soul might be love. Or, at least, the beginning and green shoot of it; he’s never seen it so new before; all the love he’s sensed is older, rooted love – the love between brothers, between Sam and Eileen, and the old, profound and grieving love that Dean carries and guards close and secret in his heart. The love his family has for him, and he for them.

Jack stretches his invisible wings out, spread and reaching, and all the love that surrounds him collects on his feathers like static electricity gathered on socks; it runs like a current from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head, and he’s all alight and alive, recharged. The chill of Lucifer, of _Lightbringer_ , seems so very far away right now.

“Oh come on Sammy, dinner?” Dean rolls his eyes – but good humor sparkles around his soul; Jack doesn’t need to be half-archangel to see it – from where he stands behind the grill, wearing the apron that Jack decorated for him. “That’s the best you come up with? We live in Monster Hunter HQ, dude. It’s awesome. No, no,” he says to Claire, pointing his spatula for good measure. “When you invite her over, take her down to the armory. _That’ll_ impress her.” Claire’s cheeks bloom with color again. “Then you can have dinner,” Dean adds, turning back to the grill. 

The burgers sizzle as he flips them, and Jack’s stomach growls. He moves to hover around Dean, who spares a hand to ruffle his hair and says, “Almost done. How ‘bout you go get the buns from the kitchen?”

Jack nods, and his flight is easy and swift, and he’s in the kitchen and outside again in less than the beat of his heart; the gust of wind from his unseen wings bothers the flames on the grill only a little before they bounce back. And then they’re gone, extinguished as Dean clicks the knob of the grill to off.

They eat and talk and the evening grows to night, dark and clear around them; the stars and the fireflies twinkle from their parallel stations above the earth. It’s good; it’s familiar and familial and Jack bubbles with all of its energy.

He’s distracted, blinking upwards to the sky, by the brief coin-glint of a shooting star. Claire notices his start and follows his gaze, and she catches the last fading tail of it before nudging him with her elbow.

“Call it, make a wish!”

“What?” Jack blinks. “A wish?”

“Yeah, it’s—”

“I know what a wish is, Claire,” Jack says, rolling his eyes (Dean says he learned that from her, but he doesn’t need to venture outside his immediate family to be exposed to the art of eye-rolling and banter). “I’m not a _baby_.”

Claire rolls her eyes right back at him, but she’s smiling just like he is. “Alright, fine, doofus. Gonna make the wish or not?”

Jack turns his eyes up to the night sky and smiles.

Even though, by law of the human tradition of dibs, it’s Jack’s shooting star and his wish has been granted priority, and because the hunter motto of the Winchesters and Co. is “we make our own luck,” as he gazes up and tries to settle on something to wish for he’s a bit surprised to hear the small, private thoughts of those seated at the table with him, as each silently sounds off their own wish.

 _Because a wish is kind of like a prayer_ , he thinks, _right?_ A quiet act of yearning that, sometimes, isn’t so quiet. Nobody prays to Jack – he’s a nephilim, not an angel, so no one outside the family knows his name, and no one inside the family intentionally prays to him (there’s the occasional moment where a want will drift through the calm hum in his head, some directed at him, some not; things like _Gotta remind Jack to clean his room_ , or _This needs more salt_ , or _Should’ve told Sam to carry his own rabbit food inside_ , and Jack will usually move to assist).

 _For Eileen to come home safely_ – Sam wishes first, and Jack seconds it, not minding if it ends up counting for his own, because he really likes Eileen, the latest of their small and strange family dead-and-then-not-dead again, although she wasn’t ever really dead in the first place; she’s funny and kind and he’s excited to show her his progress in ASL when she gets back.

Claire’s comes through next, _I don’t know, it’s kinda stupid to be wishing on a star, I guess but, um. If Emily could, uh, like me back? That’d be cool. Uh, thanks?_

Jack smiles to himself. He still doesn’t know what to wish for, but gazing up at the stars with his family is good enough for him, he thinks. Maybe he should wish for more nights like this.

Dean’s thoughts are silent for so long that Jack assumes that he’s not going to join in.

But then, clear and quiet, Jack hears it, and he starts against the eddy of emotion; he has to pull back from it, trying to keep his balance. It’s a strangely formatted wish, and Jack thinks that perhaps Dean doesn’t realize it’s a wish at all. On the surface it asks for nothing, but beneath that, it asks for the impossible everything.

_I still miss you._

“Whoa hey, don’t give yourself an aneurysm, dude, it’s just a wish.”

Jack blinks back to table to find his brow tight, and he relaxes his face as he tucks away his puzzled feeling. Claire’s looking at him with her eyebrows lifted.

“You okay, Jack?” Sam asks. He sets down his drink and leans forward, ready to lend a listening ear should Jack require it.

“Uh, yeah.” Jack shrugs. “Just a little tired.” He looks down at his empty plate and yawns. He only has to fake it for approximately two seconds before it becomes real.

Dean looks at his phone-screen. “Alright, bedtime, kiddo.” He stands and begins to pick up the dishes. “Claire, you remember where the guest room is?”

“Oh no it’s fine,” Claire says. “I’m good to drive.”

“Nonsense,” Dean insists. “It’s late. You’ve had a long day. You need rest.”

“Dean, I’m a hunter, not a…” Her words trail off into a yawn, and when she opens her eyes it’s to find everyone suppressing a smile. “Fine,” she shrugs, crossing her arms, but she’s trying to suppress a smile. “I’ll stay in your dumb, lavender-scented guestroom.”

“Hey now,” Dean protests, placing the pile of dishes he’s collected in front of Sam (“He who makes the dinner does not have to clean the dinner, Sammy,” should be embroidered and hung over the kitchen doorway or something, for how often Dean says it).

“I’m just saying—”

“ _Ba-ba-ba-buh-bup,_ nope,” Dean waves off the end of Claire’s sentence. “Lavender is relaxing. And those air-fresheners were on clearance.”

Claire snorts a laugh as she heads into the bunker, a laugh that overlaps with Sam’s. Dean sighs, long-suffering but affectionate, and Jack bites back a smile as he follows Sam and Claire inside.

He expects to hear Dean’s footsteps behind them, but the stairway is silent and the cool of the evening breeze flows in through the still-open door.

Jack stops, letting Sam and Claire and their conversation go on ahead, and glances back over his shoulder. Dean stands back, alone in the near-dark under the expanse of stars. Jack hears it again, the wish or the prayer – whatever it is, it sounds something like hope, aggrieved and desperate – as Dean stares up into the sky.

 _I miss you_.

It echoes his heart – _Mother, come back –_ but it reverberates with a different kind of love. He looks up at the stars, too, and it’s a quiet, still moment in the night. They seem so far away, so distant and cold and fragile. But they’re so bright, and they sing with so much energy that Jack marvels that they aren’t alive.

Not for the first time, Jack wonders if he could reach them.

 _I miss you_ , and Jack wonders at how they had the same wish. 

\-- 

Then

Dean handles Castiel’s death the way he’s handled all the others: poorly, drowning in liquor and guilt.

And Sam gets it, he does; he has his own unhealthy ways of coping with the bone-broken, heart-muscle-torn pain of their lives. He knows what it is to mourn someone you thought was going to be by your side forever. Someone you love. Sam has done it far too many times already.

But Sam cannot abide it this time.

Because they’ve both gotten better about dealing with their shit, because they’ve made progress in the way they handle the grim-dark bloody grief they both carry around, carving out a bit by bit of light, and it hurts Sam to see Dean this way. 

But Sam especially can’t let this continue because Jack is wailing again, and it’s late – or early; the smug green glow of the clock reads 2-goddamn-early-AM – and Sam is running his hands through his hair (which he’s convinced is ever-thinning), and he is _so done_ – he’s already skimmed through _What to Expect the First Year_ (likely inaccurate, given Jack’s heritage; he tried to cross-reference it with lore on nephilim, but everything was at cross- and counter-points that he threw his hands up in defeat). He’s tried to make it through _The New Dad’s Survival Guide_ (the word “dad’ makes him feel weird in an utterly-uncomfortable way), and he combed through _The Happiest Baby on the Block_ (did not work; maybe nephilim are just chronically unhappy?), and half a dozen other parenting books that he’s pulled up on Amazon, and he finds his already short rope fraying shorter by the millisecond. He downloaded _Go the F**k to Sleep_ last night and read it aloud with the forceful tone of an exorcism; it didn’t help the baby drift off to the sweet, blissful quiet of slumber in the slightest, but swearing helped Sam feel a little better. He repeats it under his breath like a mantra, “ _Go the fuck to sleep, please go the fuck to sleep_.”

It’s been nearly a week since they brought Jack back to the bunker, since Dean sequestered himself in his room, away from the infant, and Sam leans against the crib – which he set up in an actual room, and not in the dungeon like Dean insisted – and drops his head in defeat before looking at the scrunched red and wet face of the wailing infant that apparently hasn’t tired of wailing in the two straight days that he’s been doing it.

“What do you want from me?” He asks, desperate, because he’s tried everything: food, changing, swaddling, even Mozart (and when that didn’t work, he admits he tried one of Dean’s cassette tapes). Jack’s only response to _everything_ has been to screech louder.

Sam needs help.

He needs his brother.

He leaves Jack to wail, and he doesn’t feel the slightest bit guilty (well, maybe a little, but his ears drink in the blessed quiet once he walks away, closing the door behind him). He walks down the hall to Dean’s room, fully prepared to break down the solid wood to drag his brother from his grief, when he stops.

Dean’s door is open.

His heart catches in his throat and he rushes forwards, pushes the door open to find…

Nothing but an empty room.

The bed is rumpled – half the sheets and all of the pillows have been strewn on the floor. It reeks of alcohol and body odor, and there’s a sad staleness to the air. Empty glasses, empty bottles, and more empty glasses are littered across the room. Dean isn’t here.

So where is he?

Sam rushes through the bunker – did he hear him take the Impala? Is he in the kitchen? Bathroom? He couldn’t have heard him leave, Sam thinks, running his hands through his hair, not over the sound of Jack. He all-but bursts into the library, moves through its emptiness, moves through the war-room and its vacant map table. He picks up speed and panic with every step, with every empty room; he rushes to the garage – the Impala is still there and that gives Sam a reason to breathe just a little easier, but not much.

He loops back through the hallway and all its bedrooms, trying to think, trying to _think_ , when he halts. _Oh_.

The door to room fifteen is open, and the light is on.

Sam’s heart breaks, again.

He gently pushes the door all the way open, and finds Dean, slouched over on the bed, an empty glass in one hand and a quarter-full bottle of whiskey in the other. His back rises and falls in time with his breathing. Sam closes his eyes and sways in exhaustion and relief, because he didn’t know what he would’ve done if Dean was _gone_.

Sam takes the glass from Dean’s limp grip, and does the same for the bottle. Dean murmurs, then groans as he stirs, blinking up at Sam through red-rimmed, bleary eyes. It doesn’t look like he’s changed clothes since they got home. He reeks of body odor and alcohol.

Dean makes a grunt that could’ve been Sam’s name, that could’ve been _go away_ , that could’ve just been meaningless sound. Sam hurts for him, he does. He’s hurting with him. He looks around at this bare-empty room – _Castiel’s_ room, a room you can hardly tell that anyone has ever lived in, for how untouched it is, and _shit_ , Sam swallows, _did they – did_ he – _ever throw any actual effort in letting Castiel know that this was his_ home – and he looks at his brother, who looks like he walked in and collapsed on the bed, and there’s a moment of wanting to leave Dean be. Sam feels like he is stepping on a grave.

But it’s for their own good – both Dean’s and his – that he gets Dean’s arm slung across his shoulders and an arm wrapped around his waist, hefting him up from the bed.

Dean tries to shove Sam away, through the slush of his inebriation, but Sam’s got height and sobriety on his side, and he wrests his brother up, half-dragging, half-carrying him down the bunker’s hall.

“G’dammit Sammy,” Dean growls, slow and garbled, dragging his feet along every other stumble. “What’re y’doing?”

Sam ignores him, gritting his jaw, because he doesn’t trust his voice; he ignores him as Dean slurs more protests, ignores him as he pushes his hand against Sam, haphazard and ineffective. 

They finally reach the bathroom. Sam almost sits Dean on one of the random stools in there before he thinks better of it, and instead guides Dean into one of the shower stalls. He helps him out of his jeans before he sets him on the floor, helps him lean back against the wall. He gets his shirt off and Dean sits quietly, face turned away, all the fight apparently gone out of him. His shoes are off already, and Sam slips his socks from his feet. Boxers then, too. Sam tosses the clothing to the side and then steps back, out of the line of the shower’s spray, and turns it on. Cold.

Dean makes a very undignified _yawp_ , and his arms flail out, eyes flying wide open. He sounds mad – he looks mad – but even though he climbs to his feet, his hands braced against the wall, glaring at Sam, he doesn’t step out from under the spray.

The anger melts from him as he begins to shiver, goosebumps raising across his skin, and after a while Sam reaches over and turns the shower off. The only sound echoing through the big, empty room is the steady _drip, drip, drip_ of water, and the quiet sound of their breathing.

Sam doesn’t have any words, and neither does Dean. But they’ve both never been quite good with words, so Sam wraps one of the towels around his brother’s shoulder, another around his waist. Dean doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t make a sound. But his eyes look a little clearer. And he’s standing on his own feet, his hand dropped from the wall.

Sam guides him out of the bathroom, hand hovering over Dean’s shoulder in case he stumbles and falls. Dean sits down on the edge of his own bed. His eyes look at nothing. He looks tired. And old, and young, harried and fragile, battle-scarred.

Sam finds some sweat pants and an old tee in the closet. Dean doesn’t help with the dressing, but he doesn’t resist, either, and Sam continues his quiet caretaking. Dean lies down as soon as Sam steps away, curling up on his side on top of the covers.

When Sam returns with a glass of water and some aspirin, Dean sits up long enough to drink it before lying back down. Sam doesn’t expect him to say anything, which is why it’s a surprise to hear the rough scrape of Dean’s voice before he leaves Dean to rest.   

“I’m sorry.”

Sam pauses at the doorway, nodding, even though Dean isn’t looking at him, his gaze drifted off somewhere towards the space behind the wall, eyes half-shut. It’s possible he’s not even speaking to him.

“It’s okay Dean,” Sam says. It’s not; none of this is okay – those they’ve loved, lost and gone. But maybe it doesn’t hurt to say it. Even if the hurt remains.

Sam closes the door behind himself, but once he does he doesn’t know what to do. The bunker, which has felt like _home_ – something he’s known but rarely in his life – is too quiet. It feels more like a tomb. Full of ghosts.  

Sam sags back against the wall before sliding down to the floor.

He presses his palms to his eyes and weeps.

\-- 

Now

Jack is getting in the habit of eavesdropping.

It’s partially subconscious; his instincts and the many dusty tomes he’s pulled off the bunker’s shelves and consumed remind him that angels are, amongst other things, watchers of humanity.

And it’s partially accidental, at least this morning – nature calls and it’s not _his_ fault the guest room where Claire spent the night is between his room and the bathroom.

It’s also his choice – he could walk past the open doorway where Dean is standing and watching Claire pack up her duffel; he could easily flap his wings and go about his business. But he stops, pressing his body close to the wall. He doesn’t wrap invisibility around himself – he’s still working on that, and it’s tiresome to hold for long – but he does shake out his wings to take flight at a moment’s notice.

Dean’s asking if Claire’s sure she won’t stick around for breakfast – “Kinda promised Mom,” she replies, the word spoken without a heartbeat’s hesitation, “that I’d make it up to Sioux Falls for lunch.”

“I’m making pancakes,” Dean says.  

Claire laughs. “You are _such_ a dad.” Jack can practically hear her eyes rolling, but it’s mostly out of young-adult obligation; he can also hear the brightness of the smile in her voice and he smiles to himself.

There’s the crackle-shift of emotion, then – a dampening, like how a towel becomes impossibly heavy when it accidentally trails into the bathwater. 

Claire’s the first one to clear her throat. “You make a good one, you know,” she says. “A dad.”

Dean’s soul glitters with gratitude at her compliment, and Jack smiles. She’s right, even though Dean shrugs, bashful. Jack expects him to completely shrug off the compliment with a funny quip, something to lighten the air, but all he says instead is, “Thanks, Claire.”

Claire just nods, and fiddles with the zipper of her duffel bag before pulling it closed. Dean moves back to let her exit, and Jack pulls his grace around himself, vanishing from sight as they walk down the hallway.

They stop in front of room fifteen.

They’re quiet for a long time. Neither opens the door.

“Sometimes I still…pray to him,” Claire says. Her gaze is fixed on the dark wood. She starts to lift a hand to the still-bright gold 15 but then lowers it, shrugging. “It’s not that I forget, that he’s... That.” She resettles the strap of her bag on her shoulder, as if it has grown in heaviness. “It’s just…” She trails off.

“It helps,” Dean supplies softly. Knowingly.

“Yeah,” Claire agrees, something thick and difficult in her throat. “He was a good dad too.”

At the breaking of her voice Jack can no longer bear it, this scene, and he wings to the bathroom, away from the pull-down weight of grief. As he washes his hands he stares at himself in the mirror.

His eyes are green, his hair is brown and bed-rumpled, sticking up all along one side. A small smattering of freckles clusters on the bridge of his nose, brought out by his time in the Kansas sun. The blank space behind him are where his wings rest, both colorful and colorless, indescribable with human words.

Sam tells him that he looks like his mother, in the few occasions that Jack has asked about her. An awkward trepidation encroaches whenever he enquires about his parentage, and he understands. He is the Winchester’s family so much more than he has been or ever will be Lucifer’s, but there are some things that just can’t be shaken.

There’s pain then, in his heart like a jostled splinter, and he averts his eyes from his reflection; his reflection that is an echo of his mother.

He remembers her love, impossible to ignore because he spent so long wrapped and basking in the golden glow of it within her womb; she loved him, certainly, and her absence cuts him, because he is standing here, breathing, warm, and surrounded in love yet again, and she is gone and cold in a faraway grave.

Her grave that he’s never even visited. Castiel’s grave that he’s never visited. Castiel, who had such faith in him, who saved him and his mother. The place where Mary Winchester fell through a tear his birth created. Mary, who stayed with his mother in the end.

He’s been thinking a lot about that place, that night. About how it was Lucifer’s hands that pushed the blade through, that grabbed Mary and pulled her in, but all of them were there because of _him_. Jack, whose image in the mirror is a ghost he never got to meet. He _knows_ his mother loved him; her love seeped down into his very soul and it flows through him; it’s the foundation of everything he is, a renewable, powerful source of energy. But…

He never got to _hear_ it, to look into her eyes and know that she forgave him. To ask her if he was becoming someone she was proud of, someone she would still love. And he never got to know Castiel, never got to thank him, never got to learn from him. He only feels the empty space where they should be, the pull to the place of his birth, the place of their deaths. 

It’s like an itch in his wings he can’t quite scratch. It’s been almost like a song heard from another room; the words aren’t clear but the melody slips through, haunting and insistent. It’s been building since the middle of September. Precipitating this past week, as insistent and as natural as the leaves changing and falling.

And then, suddenly, it solidifies, strong and heavy-weighted in his chest; a tight and almost painful sensation; he grips the sink and nearly doubles over, wings outstretched behind him for balance. 

When he lifts his head back up, his eyes burn a bright, yellow-gold, and he understands what he must do.

\--

Then

Dean doesn’t so much sleep as fade out of consciousness. A numb howling, like a blizzard wind, chases him like formless shadows, whispering to him as he tosses and turns. He’s only half-aware of crying out. No one answers.

And then, sometime in the night, his body – well-versed in the surviving of terrible things – pulls him down into something akin to rest, vague and dreamless.

When he wakes, it’s with the sense that an entire age has passed, and his head feels strangely empty without the pain. His body feels scrubbed out and raw. He lies there, staring up at the ceiling until it becomes claustrophobic, and then he sits up, slowly, adjusting to consciousness. Sam left a blanket draped over him, and he runs his fingers over it. It’s soft and warm. One of the blankets they brought back from an indulgent Target run on their way back through Kearney a while ago. It’s blue.

Dean gathers it in his hands and lifts it to his face, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply. It doesn’t smell of anything. He doesn’t know why he thinks it should.

He sits up, slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His head spins, dizzy from lack of food and proper hydration. When he finishes scrubbing his hands over his the prickling-stubble of his face he notices the refreshed glass sitting on his nightstand. He reaches for its coolness, and forces himself to drink slowly.

When it’s gone, he’s left with the empty glass in a quiet room. He remembers Sam carrying him from Cas’ room, remembers the icy shock of the shower, remembers rage, remembers grief, remembers weariness. All that’s left of him feels hollow now, but he finds his feet. It’s the sense of slogging through molasses, through the stick-slurch grip of boggy mud, but he moves forward.

The bunker is no quieter than it usually is: the hum of florescent lights, the hiss of the air circulation system, the faint gurgle of water through pipes, the various unsettling groans of a foundation settling into the earth. There are no spirits here, but Dean gets the sense now that this home of theirs may well be haunted.

As he makes his way through the hall, he doesn’t see or hear Sam – or the devil spawn, for that matter – and it worries him a little, like the unraveling of a small thread of the smothering cloth of numbness inside him. It probably should worry him more. Sam is all he has left now, again.

He's halfway through hoping that Sam locked Satan’s Kid in the dungeon like he asked before trying (and failing) to stitch up the mess of himself when he reaches the kitchen, and there’s his brother.

Sam looks half-dead; dark-circles hang under his eyes and his usually well-coiffed hair is all tangled and askew. His hands are curled around a steaming mug of coffee and he’s probably about twenty seconds from tumbling face-down into it.

There’s relief at seeing him whole and alive, so much that Dean didn’t realize just how worried he was, and then there’s the guilt, the _I should’ve been there for my brother and I wasn’t_. Because that’s where he’s always failed, isn’t it, being there for the people who need him?

Sam looks up at him, and he smiles before his eyes crinkle with concern, like he knows what Dean is thinking. Hell, he probably does.

“Hey,” Dean says, the awkwardness punctuated by a cough, seeing as he hasn’t used his voice for anything for almost a week.

“Hey. It’s good to see you,” Sam says, like he’s talking to a spooked witness or a shy dog, and coming from anyone else that tone would be patronizing, but Sam _means_ it. He’s always meant it. “That coffee’s fresh, here, let me—”

He moves to stand but Dean’s concerned he won’t be able to remain upright, and so he waves Sam off. “I can get it, it’s okay. You sit,” he says, and Sam reluctantly sits back down. His own hands have a faint tremble to them as he pulls a mug from the cabinet and pours the coffee. But he manages, and he sits down across from Sam, wraps his hands around the ceramic and lets the warmth slowly seep into himself.

There’s silence before Dean breaks it with a breath.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” he says, he begins, as good a place as any.

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam tries to say, but Dean cuts him off.

“No, me checking out on you isn’t okay, alright? I’ve gotta be there for you. I can’t just leave you alone in the crap-fest our lives always become.”

“Pretty bad right now, isn’t it?” Sam says, head bowing towards his coffee mug, a humorless smile on his face, and Dean understands the feeling, knows it first-hand – they’ve both been through hell and back, literally, multiple times, suffering, bleeding, broken.

“Hard to believe we’ve been through worse,” Dean feels all the bitterness kick up inside him, because that’s not true, and Sam puts it into words, says,

“Loss is always worse.” He lifts his head and meets Dean’s eyes, and Dean meets his right back, nodding, and shares that burden. The tortures of hell can’t ever hold a candle to losing the people you love.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He takes a gulp of his coffee, feels it burn all the way down. It makes him think of hypothermia, and how if you’re warmed too fast your heart just gives out. The body can’t handle the swing of extremes. Hope and loss are like that too, he supposes, two sides of the same coin, like too cold and too hot; the soul can’t handle the wild swing. Hope ripped away too quickly makes the heart give out.

“God,” Sam says, pressing the pads of his fingertips against his eyes. He looks so young and so sad and Dean’s already standing, crossing around the table to him. Sam’s already on his unsteady feet by the time Dean reaches him, as ready to embrace Dean as Dean is him.

“I know, Sammy, I know,” Dean says, holding onto him.

“They were my family too,” Sam’s words go mostly into his shoulder, but Dean still hears them and all their pain. “I need you here, Dean. I can’t do this alone.”

“I’m gonna be here. I promise.”

The best way to begin to heal from the cold is to slowly warm the core of the body, Dean knows. It’s all about time, the long slow crawl of it. And so they stay like that, underground in an ancient bunker that became a tomb, that became a home once and could, maybe, somehow, in a long, unfathomable way, become a home again.

“Alright,” Dean says, at length, patting Sam on the back and drawing back with a sniffle. “Go get some sleep, alright?”

“Alright, yeah,” Sam agrees. “I should probably check on Jack, first—”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll check on him.” Dean waves him off as Sam starts to argue. “Go sleep, before you fall over. I ain’t carrying you to bed.”

“Jerk,” Sam says, with a smile soft with weariness.

Dean’s own smile is similar, a pain in his heart, and he can’t tell if it’s of the wound or of the healing kind. “Bitch.”

Sam leaves, sluggish but persistent, and Dean is left alone in the kitchen.

He reaches for his coffee and catches sight of something underneath his nails. The darkness of grave-dirt.

Dean stumbles to the sink, bile and coffee rising hot to the back of his throat. He’s watching it disappear down the drain, forever past his grasp, when he realizes that it was the last thing that he had of Cas.

\--

Now

Jack scarfs down his breakfast even though he doesn’t need to. He should savor it; Dean’s pancakes are his favorite: the tang of blueberries splashing over his tongue, balanced with the light vanilla-fluff of the batter, the sweetness of the syrup and the salt of the butter. But he’s eager to get ready to go.

“Gon’ go to m’ room,” he mumbles around a mouth crammed with his last pancake as he stands up from the table; he’s already to the sink and rinsing off his plate by the time he senses Dean’s surprise, followed by the faint glimmer of amusement from Sam. He doesn’t make it out of the kitchen before he hears,

“Whoa now, hold up.” 

His wings twitch, invisible, on his back. One quick beat and he’d be gone to where he needs to go. But winging away from a conversation is impolite, and more than that: it would definitely get him grounded.

When he turns around, Sam is obviously hiding a smile with a long drink of coffee, and Dean’s expression is equal parts bemused and offended at Jack’s abrupt exit attempt (there’s still quite a stack of pancakes left on the center of the table).

“Where’re you off to in such a rush?” Dean asks.

Lying is not Jack’s forte. Luckily, it’s not a (total) lie when he says, “To my room.”

“Don’t you have a history test to study for?”

“But it’s _Saturday_ ,” Jack groans.

“Yeah, and your Minecraftering can wait until after homework. And,” Dean adds, pointing the sausage link speared on his fork at Jack, and then at Jack’s empty seat. “Until _after_ breakfast. Sit.”

Jack lets out a sigh and slouches into his chair. In his periphery he sees Dean shoot a look to Sam, one that amounts to _What was that?_ combined with, _Oh, so no help from you?_ Sam tosses him a look and a shrug that means something like, _Kids._

The pulse in his chest is an insistent tug, and he tries to shush it, to soothe it with a gentle stroke of grace and it quiets down, but only for a moment. He frowns, staring down at his chest.

“You alright there, Jack?”

Dean’s voice jolts him, and Jack scrambles sits up in his seat. “I’m fine!” He says it maybe a little too quickly, maybe pitched a little too high, because Sam and Dean are both raising their brows at him again. “I think I’m still hungry, actually.”

The cover works. Sam laughs and tells him to get another plate from the cupboard; Dean shakes his head but there’s a fond smile on his face as he passes the plate of sausage over to Jack.

“You’re something, kiddo,” Dean says, with a chuckle of agreement from Sam, and what he means, under those words, is _Love you_.

So Jack replies, “Love you guys too,” and he grins before shoving another pancake in his mouth. He is actually hungry, he supposes. Maybe not entirely for the breakfast – he’s noticed, lately, that it’s the love that feeds him.

So he sits, and he stays in their company, and he lets it nourish him.

\--

Then

 

There’s only one place to go afterwards, and that’s to keep watch over the nephilim. The descent to the bunker’s lower level is accompanied by a familiar chill, and Dean has a brief moment of concern – babies shouldn’t be exposed to the cold – before he reminds himself that this _is not_ a baby. It’s a creature of heat and rage and destruction. A half-archangelic time-bomb. The kind of being that belongs in a dungeon.

When he opens the heavy metal doors, however, he groans, pressing his fingers against his temples. “Sam…” The dungeon is empty. Which means that…thing…is loose.

He takes the stairs by two’s – and if he has to pause at the top to catch his breath it’s fine, because nobody is around to know.

Dean stalks through the hall, intent on confronting Sam, until his brother’s dark circles and slouched shoulders replay in his mind, and he swivels away. He’s been hunting monsters since he was a child. He can hunt this one down just fine.

He starts his search in the living quarters, going door to door and peering in. Each is empty. He’s to fear that Sam is keeping _Satan’s offspring_ with him in his room when he reaches the section of the quarters where their rooms are. Four doors down from his own room he finds what he’s looking for.

He’s met with a screaming wail that nearly blows his eardrums out, the florescent lights sparking and flickering in the hall. He slams the door.

Dean reaches behind himself for the gun at the waistband of his pants when he realizes he’s not carrying one. Or any weapon. He’s fairly sure that it would shrug off any bullets he fired at it; Lucifer was hardly fazed by the angel-killing bullets Dean filled him with. If Dean had managed to kill him then and there, things would be so different…

He briefly considers going and digging one of the angel blades out from their collection, but he can’t even bear to think about the sight of the flash of wounded grace, the one that he still sees every time he closes his eyes. He presses his forehead against the door, and slowly reaches his hand to the doorknob.

He cracks it open, bracing himself for pain. None comes. He opens it a little wider. The nephilim is quiet. He pokes his head inside the room. It’s almost entirely dark except for a small lamp left on and sitting atop a desk. It casts a soft and golden light, which reaches the crib set up in the open space beside the bed. It’s old, and the paint on the wooden frame is chipped; Dean wonders at the idea that the Men of Letters had families here. It doesn’t exactly seem like a place to raise children, though it’s far better than anything Dean ever had as a kid.

The nephilim still doesn’t blast Dean’s hearing out as he steps into the room. He’s beginning to think that it’s not even in the crib, loose somewhere, probably hanging from the ceiling or something, waiting to drop down and rip him and Sam to shreds, when he hears a faint snuffle. And then a soft, sad whimper.

Dean peers over the railing of the crib and meets the eyes of Lucifer’s child.

Its eyes are green and fat wet tears are welling in them, face scrunched and reddened. It looks too small for what it is. Too vulnerable. Too human.

“You’re not human, you know,” Dean says, aloud. The nephilim doesn’t make any indication that it understands. Its lower lips wobbles. “So you can quit the whole ‘baby’ act, alright? I don’t know what your game is, but I’m on to you. Whatever your evil plan is, it ain’t gonna fly.”

Dean sits down on the bed. Sam left the laptop here, along with several thick books that are frayed along the spine, the outer edges of the pages ambered with age. There’s a legal pad with Sam’s handwriting scrawled all over it; the notes start out like a schedule, when Sam fed it, when it slept – and apparently it slept a lot when they brought it back. Then it woke up. And it wouldn’t stop crying. A pang of sympathy bolts through him; John wasn’t above leaving him with not-even-a-year-old Sam, and Dean remembers the twisting, stressing panic of not being able to figure out the cause of a baby’s cries. Especially when you’ve never raised one before.

Guilt, then, at leaving Sam alone in the way that their father left Dean alone. He’s better than that. Better than John.

There’s a scribbled, desperate list of things Sam tried to soothe the nephilim. Dean can hardly make out any of the words.

“Well, you’re not crying now,” Dean says, tossing the notebook aside and standing up. And then he mentally kicks himself, because the moment after the words leave his mouth the nephilim makes another, more miserable whimper from its place in the crib.

The whimpers start to burble into the beginning of cries. “Really? Gonna start that?” The longer he stands in the room un-vaporized, the more confident he gets. He rests his forearms against the crib rail as the nephilim hiccups and its cries gain cohesion and volume. Not as loud as the screeching-demon wail that greeted him, but normal, upset infant level. “Alright,” Dean says. The noise is loud enough, though, that it starts to rekindle his headache. “Do that. You’ll get no pity from me.”

Dean watches it cry, feet kicking and face twisting. It looks patently _unhappy_ , and Dean has to quash down his instinct to help it. “How about you knock that off and talk to me, _mano e mano_?” It gives no indication that it’s heard, and Dean is starting to think that, perhaps, it really _can’t_ hear him.

He shrugs as best he can in his casual pose, hands lifting off the railing, _whatever,_ and then it surprises him. Dean flinches backwards, almost fall to the floor on his ass.

Its little pudgy hands outstretch towards him, reaching. It’s disgusting: tears splotching its face, snot running from its nose. But that’s what babies are: messy. Dean’s repulsed more by the fact that this _thing_ – Jack or whatever Kelly named it – is the reason Cas is gone, forever. The reason his mother – who he just go back, who he was just starting to _really_ get to know – is gone, forever. Hell, the thing couldn’t even be born without killing its own mother.

And yet, Cas was willing to risk everything for this kid. It was the first time Dean had heard him talk about faith in a long time. Which was two parts scary and one part, Dean admits, refreshing. It was good to see him motivated again. Even if it was frustrating, enraging, and worrisome. Especially since Castiel never _stayed put_ long enough to tell Dean any of what he was thinking. He just charged off on his own, _again_ , and yeah, Dean knows he could’ve – should’ve – tried harder to pin the guy down (there’s a flash of heat of something other than anger at that thought, and he startles before pushing it back, guilt and grief twining together), maybe actually came across as willing to listen. Maybe if Dean had told him, after that long and terrible night of watching Cas’ insides turn out, that he _loved_ —

Jack – the nephilim – makes a long, whining cry, and seems to put more effort into straining his tiny, outstretched arms towards Dean. He swears he sees something flicker in its eyes. Something – no, not hungry. Not exactly. Not maliciously, anyways. Something starving. Needy.

This motherless, friendless creature is reaching out to him. And Dean can’t help but react. Can’t help but begin to reach back.

\--

Now

 

Jack escapes from the breakfast table once his guardians finish eating, and they take their time. He’s watched Dean wolf down a double cheeseburger in what should’ve been an impossible – or at the very least, record – time, so he knows that there’s lesson in patience attempting to be taught here.

He escapes Sam’s homeschooling by quickly and loudly announcing that he has to use the bathroom, and runs off before either of the brothers have a chance to say anything. (His hearing does pick up Dean’s, _“What’s up with him this morning?”_ as he leaves, however).

As soon as he’s out of sight and earshot he snaps his wings, landing in his bedroom. The swiftness of the action leaves him a little dizzy, and he shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. He has a long way to fly – his first long-distance flight. His wings twitch with energy, refusing to lie flat against his back, eager to be properly stretched.   

He roots through his sock drawer until his fingers graze paper instead of fabric. He pulls the bills out. It’s just money he found helping clean out one of the old storage rooms, soft, green yellowed-out, faded with age. He had no use for it, but Dean told him to keep it.

Now he carefully folds it and places it in his pocket. He pulls his backpack – well, it’s actually an old leather satchel, another trophy from the day spent moving boxes and snapping his fingers to clear the thick dust away – out from under his bed. It’s one of those strange old things that occasionally crosses his path, like a coin found half-unburied beside the creek, or a particularly well-thumbed book, something steeped with memories – beloved in its time, and belonging to a man named Benjamin Valadez. He knows this because of the small tag on the inside, faded black ink still legible. He knows it was treasured because he can still feel the love on it, like the echo of warmth left after someone lifts a hand from your shoulder.

He slips the leather strap over his shoulder and lets the pack rest against his thigh. Even shortened, it’s still a little long for him. He’ll grow into it soon enough, though.

Jack fetches his tablet from the bedside table. A small channel of grace replenishes its charge before he slips it into his bag. He does the same with his phone, but he makes sure to silence it first. He’s hoping (far-fetched hope that it may be), that Sam and Dean won’t notice his absence, but he doesn’t want to be fielding angry and worried phone-calls from his guardians.

His tablet, his phone, and money for food; he’s confident that this is all he needs. Yet he finds himself hesitating. He doesn’t know what he’ll find, or what he’s really even seeking by doing this, flying halfway across the country on his own. He knows that once he moves forward, there will be no going back.

The tug again, in his heart, guiding him. A distant shore calls to him, and he must go.

With a quiet rustle of feathers, he disappears.

\--

Then

 

“It has some kind of siren’s call, Sam, I’m telling you.”

“Dean, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case here.”

Dean’s voice is a hushed, urgent whisper, even though the door to Jack’s room is shut, and the nephilim is sleeping soundly now inside. Sam looks rested now – a full day of sleep helps with that – but his expression is tipping towards weariness for a different reason than exhaustion.

“It’s making me let my guard down, I swear,” Dean says.

“Have you considered the fact that it’s because Jack’s a baby, and that’s just your natural response to children and infants?”

“What? No, look, Sam – first it was Cas, okay? And then it obviously got to you, and now it’s starting to throw its damn charms at me.”

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose before looking up in heaven’s general direction for assistance. Which is about fifty feet past a long shot, seeing as they’ve been on the bad side of heaven since, well, technically before they were born.

“If Jack has some nefarious plan, why is he spending all this time as a baby? Why doesn’t he just, I don’t know, make himself older?”

“I don’t know the details of his evil plan; I just know he has one.”  

“Why?

Dean sputters. “Wh—?” He looks at Sam like he _must_ be joking, but Sam’s face doesn’t crack into a smile; he doesn’t say, “Just kidding, Dean, haha.” Dean finds his words, “Why?” He scoffs. “Does ‘ _Son of Lucifer_ ’ mean absolutely nothing to you?”

“Maybe that doesn’t have to make him bad.”

“Sure as hell doesn’t put a whole lotta points in his ‘good’ column.”

“He’s Kelly’s son too. Doesn’t that count for anything?

“Oh, yeah, of course, and look what he did to her,” Dean shoots back. 

The guilt at saying that is like a sharp and heavy weight and he looks away. It ticks Sam off, his jaw clenching as he breathes in sharply through his nose. “Dean. Have a little bit of—” Dean hears the beginning of “grace” and glares at Sam, _don’t you go there_ , “Compassion,” Sam amends. “He’s half-human, Dean.”  

“You and me both know that humans make the worst monsters out of all of them."

“It’s not like he had a choice! Being born what and who he is.”

“I don’t care! I don’t care what he wanted, and what he chose and he didn’t! He’s, he’s responsible!”

“For what?” Sam exclaims.

“For, for…” Dean knows what he feels Jack is responsible for, but he can’t bring himself to say it; laying the blame will only force him to voice the words of what happened, of what he – what they – lost.

“Do you think I had a choice to be fed demon blood as a baby?” Sam says, cold and even, but when Dean meets his eyes in surprise he sees the uncertainty there, the carefully guarded fear.

“What?” Dean says, shocked out of his anger towards the nephilim. “No. What? Of course not, Sammy, what the hell?”

“How is my past any different from his?” Sam asks, and Dean is beginning to understand that the care Sam has been showing Jack might not be mind-control, but some (however misguided Dean thinks it may be) act of empathy. Compassion.

Dean’s words are losing their fight when he says, “I don’t know, Sam, it just…” How can he argue against a point like that?

“So we’re not even going to give him a chance? A chance to be good? To be something other than the evil he was supposed to be?”

Dean thins his lips. Looks down the long hallway as if there is some easy answer there. There isn’t, just cold brick wall, worn carpet, and emptiness.

Finally, Dean sighs. His shoulders sag and he feels himself deflate. He doesn’t have the energy to fight on this. He doesn’t want to fight on this. What he wants, amidst all the numbness hardening like ice in his chest, is to care for his family. And Sam’s the only family he has left. So if Sam wants to keep this kid, if they want to try and raise it for good… Maybe they give it a shot. And if it doesn’t work out, Dean just prays (not that anyone is listening anymore) that he’ll be able to put Jack down before Sam gets hurt. But maybe…just maybe, it won’t come to that. If Sam sees something of himself in this kid…maybe Sam’s right.

When he looks back at Sam, his brother’s eyes have softened. He’s doing that puppy-dog-look that he mastered and perfected years ago.

Dean rolls his eyes, but his heart isn’t in it.

“Fine.” Dean says, and Sam looks like someone just released a new true crime documentary before Dean continues, “We still have the grace extractor, right?”

Something clouds on Sam’s face, but he nods. “Yeah, uh. In the infirmary.”

“Okay then,” Dean says, more confident than he feels, with a shrug that’s half surrender. “Let’s follow that better way.”

\-- 

Now

“Jack?”

Sam knocks on the bathroom door. When there’s no answer, he knocks again. “Jack?” No answer, so he pushes the door open.

The bunker’s bathroom is community, locker-room style: a row of wide doored stalls on one side and a row of urinals on the other. There are showers, further back and around the corner. Soap dispensers that no longer work due to age still cling to the wall, so the counter-space between each sink contains a hand-soap dispenser – cucumber and mint, also something Dean found on sale.

The bathroom is also completely empty.

“Jack?” Sam calls out, again. His voice echoes off the tiled floor and walls, and it’s the only response he expects to get, so he’s not surprised.

But he’s not too worried, really, even though his gut – long honed and sharpened – tells him that something is amiss. Jack loves learning, devours knowledge and furiously inquires about anything and everything, which is a point of immense pride for Sam. He’s never wanted to skip out on his lessons. So okay, maybe Sam is a little worried.

He reaches Jack’s bedroom door and knocks, calling out his name.

No answer again, and when Sam turns the doorknob he finds that it’s unlocked, and when he swings the door open the room is quiet.

It’s quiet because it’s empty.

Jack’s bedroom is, without contest, the homeliest room in the bunker, even if Dean’s domesticism (increasing since their number of hunts slowed to a trickle as they focus on trying to build a network of hunters) gives him a run for his money.

It’s a patchwork amalgamation of items and décor gathered from the bunker’s stores, Amazon, and the occasional drive up to the nearest Walmart in Hastings: historical and lore-filled tomes spaced between lighter books intended for children; a red lava lamp placed on the nightstand; several stuffed animals piled up near the cluster of pillows. The television set that they’d set up for his half-birthday is dark, and as much as Dean pesters the kid for playing video games, Jack doesn’t use it all that much, and when he does it seems to be on the nights of grace-induced insomnia. Jack painted a few favorite sigils over his bed (“They promote peace and well-being,” Jack had said, five years old and lugging a can of paint through the bunker); the sigils are surrounded by dozens of those little glow-in-the-dark stars, plastered onto the ceiling.

All the comforts of a home that he and Dean never had. It feels good, to give something that was never given.

Sam closes the empty door – Jack is obviously not here – and moves on down the hall, occasionally calling out his name and listening for an answer. He’s surprised that Dean hasn’t heard him searching and come running, and, come to think of it, he hasn’t seen Dean since breakfast, either.

He’s less concerned about where his brother might be, and more hopeful that Dean and Jack are in the same place. And Dean, more predictable and far less likely to up in vanish in a flap of wings, is likely to be found in the garage. But before that, Sam realizes, a sudden thought snapping into his mind, he pivots in the hall, remembering one other place he can search for Jack.

It seems to be another dead end; when he opens the door to the half-organized storage room, he calls out Jack’s name to no answer. The room is dark and silent, and then it is light and silent when Sam flips the switch. There’s a pile of dissembled metal shelves waiting to be taken out the door, and some boxes of assorted items that need to be moved to the other storage room, the one that they’re actually going to be using for storage. This one’s proximity to the living quarters gave them the idea to use it as a movie room. Something homey, and more comfortable than sitting on the library’s wooden chairs, watching films on the old projector screen.  

But it’s a slow-moving project, and they’ve all gotten lazy about it – between fielding hunter queries for lore and “let me call my FBI superior” calls, homeschooling Jack, and the (very) occasional local hunt now that Jack is old enough, it’s slipped by the wayside. They plan to have it done by Thanksgiving next month, when Jody and her ever-growing brood of adopted daughters are coming down. A real family Thanksgiving, Dean had said, a spark in his eye for the first time in a long time. Even if the shroud of grief still hangs back, behind his eyes, still haunted, the absence of more than a few family members still heavy over them both.

Jack has constructed a towering blanket fort in one of the dim, semi-swept corners, and it’s on to the precariously – and definitely not intended for a grown man – stacked boxes at the base that Sam steps up. Because maybe Jack is napping, or has his headphones in, sneaking a game in on his tablet.

Sam pokes his head under the draped blanket-curtain of the fort’s entrance and sighs in relief at the lump curled up under the blanket. Jack’s sleep schedule is in flux as his body tries to strike a balance between his angel and human halves – Sam’s found him napping behind the couch one morning, and wandering the halls at 3am – and so Sam isn’t really even mad that Jack snuck away for a nap after breakfast.

“Hey Jack,” he calls out softly, because he still has to check on him. He reaches out a hand to gently shake him awake. But his hand sinks down into the form. Too soft. Too cold. It’s not Jack. Sam flips the blanket away – a pillow. Jack isn’t here.

Sam starts to turn away when it catches his eye.

There, in the rumpled fabric of the blanket, next to the pillow.

A long, tan feather. Loose. Solid, when Sam touches it gingerly. It makes his fingertips tingle.  

When he carefully lifts it, the blanket shifts aside, and two more feathers – smaller, with thin white bands spaced between the pale brown – reveal themselves. Sam swallows thickly around a lump of fresh worry. Where is Jack, and why is he losing feathers?

Sam pockets the feathers in his jacket and tries to shake the buzzing out of his hands.

He sets a quick pace towards the garage.  

\--

Then

“Are we sure about this?” Sam asks, stepping out of his brother’s way as Dean rummages for the grace extractor. “I mean, Cas seemed pretty convinced that Jack needed his grace.” 

It stings to bring up Castiel like this, with the wound of his death so raw, and Sam knows it hurts Dean even more, can see it in the tic and tense of Dean’s jaw, the way his shoulders stiffen.

“Yeah, well, Cas…” Dean can’t finish whatever he starts to say, his voice catching on the name. He’s quiet, the only sound in the room the ambient noise of the bunker and the faint rustle of Jack’s onesie against the starchy sheets of the cot where Sam placed him. The baby is looking around as much as he can with his limited mobility (he hasn’t figured out how to roll over yet), arms lifted and waving, legs kicking. Occasionally, he makes a soft chattering burble. He’s been somewhat fussy all morning, but he seems content at the moment.

If he’s aware of what they’re planning to do, he doesn’t give any indication of it.

Sam is tense. The infirmary is not a place that fosters good feelings – hospitals are pretty high on the list of places that make Sam vaguely uneasy – and the last time he was here, with the intent to use a grace extractor is not the stuff of fond reminiscence. He remembers pain, like his teeth being pulled out backwards through his skull, like his insides were burning and freezing and liquefying all at once, like every molecule was stretching and snapping. And Castiel, duty and sympathy and fear in his eyes, and then determined resolution when he’d refused to push onward at Sam’s pleading request – “Nothing is worth losing you, Sam,” he’d said, pulling Sam out of the fire of his self-inflicted torment, Sam meeting his eyes and seeing the love there.

Castiel loved him, he knew, even before the angel had said it – _I love all of you_. It was different than the way Castiel loved Dean, but love nonetheless. He was family. Sam might’ve been the youngest Winchester, but Castiel gave him the opportunity at seeing what having a little brother might’ve been like. Someone who looked up to him.

And Sam failed him.

“Sammy? Hey.”

The present reality comes shifting back to Sam. Dean’s been calling his name, trying to get his attention; he’s still standing, and now he registers the hand on his arm, and Dean’s worried face comes into view. Sam swallows, clears his throat. Gives himself time to find his voice.

“I’m.” He clears his throat again. Pushes everything back to focus on the task at hand. Blinks to clear his vision. “I’m okay.”

Dean’s eyes narrow, skeptical. “You sure about that? Because you looked about ready to keel over there.”

“I’m fine,” Sam says, and he doesn’t even believe himself. “Did you find it?” He looks down at the silver in Dean’s other hand and his stomach tightens.

Dean is opening his mouth to call bullshit when Jack _screams._

Sam’s hands cover his ears on instinct; Dean’s hand flies from his arm as his go to his own ears; neither can hear the bright clatter of the extractor hit the tile. The lights brighten, flicker, and there’s a great whiff of ozone that presses against the back of Sam’s throat; Sam feels the pressure shift and his ears pop, feels the fuzziness around his consciousness that warns him that he may black out; his eyes are screwed tightly shut and so he can’t see how Dean’s faring. The tile hits his knees before he realizes he’s going down.

He’s halfway into a half-kneeling, half-fetal position when there’s a great ripping sound. A tear that he both hears and feels. He knows that sound can kill, wonders if this is finally it, as the sonic assault crescendos, up, up, up – Sam swears his bones are vibrating, there’s the tang of blood in his mouth, he can’t even hear himself screaming—

It stops.

As suddenly as he started, Jack goes quiet.

The silence that rushes into the vacuum is its own kind of deafening.

Sam opens his eyes. Dean is lying on the floor next to him. He can see him breathing, and relief floods through him. “Dean.” Sam’s throat is sore. He reaches out to his brother as Dean moves his hands from his ears and starts to sit up.

“I’m okay,” Dean says, his voice as shot as Sam’s. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“It sounded like an angel,” Dean says, tinged with awe, swallowing hard, and it takes Sam a moment to realize that he means an angel’s true voice. “Is Jack…?”

They both make it to their feet and look at the cot. At the infant still resting atop it.

“Holy shit,” Dean croaks. Sam agrees.

Wings.

Two, perfectly formed, feather-clad wings. Sprouting right out of Jack’s back. Jack has rolled over onto his stomach, and his green eyes are ringed with the last fading glow of gold. He looks at them and babbles, unaware that he nearly just melted their brains, a gummy smile on his face. The wings themselves are haloed in a golden glow, tiny feathers splaying out as they stretch to the fullness of their small wingspan.

“Um,” Dean says.

“Huh,” Sam says.

The panic eases, though the confusion remains. Sam meets Dean’s wide eyes and the immediate and silent conversation that occurs between them is, _So what now?_

Jack’s tiny wings flap, and while they don’t lift him, they make a pleasant rustling sound like a bird in flight that seems to delight Jack. He laughs, and Sam can’t help but smile despite the last quick-beats of his heart coming down from fear. From the corner of his eye, he catches the beginnings of a smile on Dean’s face too.

And then Jack, who since his birth has been immobile, starts to crawl.

Right towards the edge of the cot.

Towards a fall that would hurt a human baby; it doesn’t matter than Jack would probably be fine – the instinct to help takes over.

Sam moves, but Dean moves faster.

He scoops Jack up before he falls with a frantic urgency that somehow manages to mind his new wings. “Jesus Christ, kid,” Dean breathes, shifting him into a proper baby-holding position. Jack’s wings flap again, and he shrieks – this time at a normal, human-friendly frequency, and happily. And then, with a coo, rests his head against Dean’s chest, folding his wings and snuggling against him.

Dean stiffens and looks down at the baby in his arms in surprise, as if Jack had suddenly materialized there. Dean looks at Sam, who raises his eyebrows and tries not to let his smugness (and jealousy; Jack never cuddled against _him_ ) show.

“Seems like he likes you,” Sam grins.

“Shut up,” Dean snips, but it lacks heat. “What’s with the wings? Did the lore say anything about nephilim having actual wings?”

Sam steps closer, shaking his head. “No. But then, there’s not much and half of what’s there is probably wrong.” Jack’s wings are a soft, pale brown, and up close there are freckles of white and black peppering the feathers, but there’s also a haze to them, a blur around the edges, that suggests that they’re liminal. “I’m going to assume it’s normal?” There’s really no other option, no way to know. Their resident angel expert is gone.

“Fantastic,” Dean sighs.

“Do you…think they’ll go away if we take his grace?”

“Or we could just be left with a half-baby, half-bird mess,” Dean says, voicing Sam’s newest fear about the procedure. It doesn’t come quite close enough to overtake his most pressing fear that Jack simply won’t survive it, but it almost does. “Which would kind of screw with him being a normal human kid.”  

“I don’t think that was ever going to be his life, Dean,” Sam says gently.

The fact that Dean doesn’t argue means that he knows that Sam is right. Grace or no grace, Jack isn’t going to be a “normal” kid. This development makes that fact inescapable.

“Alright, then. Plan C.” Dean says. “Let’s go get this kid some lunch.”

Sam follows Dean from the infirmary, pausing only to turn off the light. The extractor is left where it fell on the floor, skittered under a table, and Sam closes the door behind them.

\-- 

Now

“Have you seen Jack?”

“He playing hooky?” Dean grins over the top of the Impala. “Atta boy.”

Sam resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Dean, _you_ were the one who told him he had to study before he played video games.”

“Hey, I can be a good parent _and_ be proud of my kid for ditching school.”

“Dean. Seriously.”

“Alright, okay.” Dean lifts up his hands in mock surrender, the grin remaining on his face. “He’s probably in his room.”

“I checked. And he wasn’t in the bathroom where he said he’d be. I thought he’d come out here with you, but…” Sam gestures to the empty garage.

A bit of Dean’s smile slips. “Did you check the kitchen? Or that one storage room we kind of cleared out? He has some kind of roost in there or something, I dunno.”

“He’s not there either.” The kitchen was empty of everything but the dishes Sam’s been meaning to do, and he already climbed the precariously stacked shelves and boxes not meant for a grown man to poke his head into the blanket fort at the top. Jack was gone, but a long, sandy-brown feather caught Sam’s eye. He pulls it, and a few smaller feathers he found when he’d shifted aside some of the blankets, out from his jacket pocket.

“I, uh, found these, though. In the storage room.”

“Um, okay?” Dean looks at him like he’s crazy, not understanding the relevance, until, “Wait.” The smile is completely gone now, replaced with a puzzled frown, and Dean squints at the feathers in Sam’s hand, taking a step closer to look. “Are those Jack’s?”

“As far as I can tell, yeah.”

“What the hell? Is he sick or something? Why didn’t he say– has he said anything to you?”

“No, but Dean, hey, I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he’s just…molting?”

“ _Molting_?” Dena repeats, as if Sam just suggested that Jack was growing a second head or oozing orange slime. “Do angels even molt?”

“I don’t know! Maybe?” It’s not like lore on angels has ever been up to date or accurate; less than a decade ago they didn’t even know that angels existed. “Did Cas ever…?”

“How am I supposed to know? We never— it’s not like I _asked_ him, like, ‘hey man, are you _molting_?’” He says it with the same tone reserved for uncomfortable words, like _moist_ and _phlegm._

“Okay okay, I get it,” Sam says; it’s not like he asked Castiel either.  

“You know what, I’m just gonna call him,” Dean says, fishing his phone out of his pocket. Their list of contacts has grown ever since they decided to put the bunker’s resources to good use and begin building a hunter network – a challenge; the aftermath of the British Men of Letters meant that the surviving American hunters were even more wary about teamwork. But, like Sam, he’s got Jack on speed-dial, and he thumbs the screen, once to call, a second time for speaker.

The phone rings. And rings. And rings.

Then, the awkward stiffness of a child’s voice, “Hi. This is Jack Winchester’s voicemail. Leave a voicemail. Goodbye.”

Dean ends the call before the tone and immediately redials, face dark and unreadable. “Hi. This is Jack Win—”

“Goddamit, kid,” Dean mumbles, hanging up and then dialing again, the long unanswered rings repeating, before, “Hi. This—”

“Dean, hey,” Sam reaches out and intercepts Dean before he can redial, covering the screen with his palm. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“He knows he has to have his phone on him, and to answer it, he _knows_.” Dean’s other hand clenches into a fist and he steps away from Sam, pacing. He gets about four feet away from Sam before he takes in a deep breath through his nose, pressing his fist against his forehead. “Okay. Maybe he’s just outside, and he forgot his phone, right?” He turns to Sam. “You check the grounds yet?”

“No, I haven’t,” Sam admits. The property on which the bunker rests is fairly large, more than he could’ve covered on his own anyways.

Dean forces a too-bright smile to his face; Sam can see the cracks in it, the worried anger, the fear of losing yet another person they care for, another family member. “See, there we go. Jack’s probably out running around, through the woods picking up cool rocks again. C’mon,” he says, and on his way past Sam he claps him on the shoulder. “We’ll find him in no time.”

\-- 

Then

Dean strengthens the bunker’s warding: refreshes it, doubles it, then thinks for a moment and goes back and triples it. Heaven, Hell, and Earth all want to get their hands on this kid, and that’s not going to happen. Not on Dean’s watch.

He feels strangely vengeful – _you wanted this baby born and raised with all his mojo, Cas? Fine. I’ll raise this kid to be the best damn half-human half-archangel ever._ Never mind that Jack’s the only half-human, half-archangel kid ever, never mind that Cas can no longer hear his prayers; he throws himself to this purpose. Grabs onto that feeling with both hands and lets it carry him up, carry him on. Otherwise he’s going to sink down to the bottom.

He still doesn’t trust Jack. Not fully. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, like it always has, waiting for it to kick them when they’re down. But until then, he’s starting to think that Sam is right. Jack’s just a baby. A baby with wings, a baby with cosmic powers beyond their comprehension, a baby who day by day looks to understand more and more of what him and Sam are saying, but a baby nonetheless.

Dean is finishing painting a sigil when his phone rings.

“What’s up, Sam?”

Dean knows Sam, their codependency making them extensions of each other at times; the exchange of a single word can contain an entire battle plan; they’ve fought and died and triumphed side-by-side their whole lives; they’re so often on the same wavelength, and so Dean immediately recognizes Sam’s _It’s-not-fine-but-I’m-going-to-pretend-that-it’s-not-as-bad-as-it-is_ voice when he says,

“Could you, uh, come to the library for a moment?”

Dean’s already on his way, quick-walking, then jogging, then rushing into a run, until he bursts into the room. Sam throws him a look of _What the hell, dude?_ to which he replies with his own _What the hell d’ya mean what the hell?_ expression before scanning the room. Nothing seems amiss, no indication of an attack or an emergency.

Then he follows the tilt of Sam’s head up to the top of one of the taller bookshelves.

Where a little boy, maybe about two years old, is standing, wings spread out for balance, a smile full of missing teeth grinning down at the brothers.

“Dude,” Dean says, mouth agape, because that has to be Jack, right? What other winged children are just roaming around their home? But Jack was an infant an hour ago. “What the f—”

He’s interrupted by a delighted shriek of a laugh, and then the boy atop the bookshelf yells, “Dean!”

“Jack?” Sam asks, taking a trepidatious step closer to the shelf. “What’re you doing up there?”

Jack, who has learned to speak, but apparently only knows two words, happily calls down, “Sam!”

“Yeah, I’m Sam.” There’s a smile brightening on Sam’s face. “Why don’t you come on down.”

Jack flaps his wings, louder now that they’ve grown larger with the rest of his body, and looks at Dean, his green eyes bright and shining. “Dean!” He calls, and his right hand and his right wing try to wave simultaneously. It tips his balance, and Jack staggers forward; Sam and Dean both rush to the foot of the bookshelf, ready to catch him if he falls.

But he doesn’t. Jack’s little brow furrows as he manages to catch himself, and he straightens back up, looking immensely proud of himself.

“Alright, bud,” Dean says, craning his neck. “How about you get down from there?”

“Dean!” Jack screeches, joyfully, toeing the line of too shrill.  

“Yep, that’s me.” Dean can’t help his own smile, and the glow of pride in his chest, even though he’s still concerned that the half-angel kid is going to do a nosedive from twelve feet up. “You’ve got our names down pat. Good work, kiddo.”

“Dean and Sam!” Jack says in response.

Dean exchanges a glance with his brother. Sam’s face is lit with amusement. “Look at that, onto conjunctions already,” Dean comments, which gets him a raised eyebrow. “What? I know grammar.”

Sam rolls his eyes in good humor, and then turns his head to look back up at Jack. “Hey, Jack, look, um, we’re very impressed, but why don’t you come talk to us down here?”

Jack purses his lips at that, squinting, in a very dramatic expression of consideration. But instead of climbing down, or flying down, or doing the reverse of whatever he did to get up there in the first place, Jack sits down, swinging his legs over the edge. He seems content, repeating their names and the occasional _and_ in a sing-song, tuneless voice.

“How’d he get up there, anyways?” Dean asks Sam, keeping an eye on Jack in his periphery.

Sam shrugs. “No idea. I didn’t even see him until he started calling my name. By then he was already up there.”

“Think he’ll be fine? I mean, his grace’ll heal him if he falls, right? And it’s not like we can get him down without a ladder.” Is there even a ladder in the bunker? There must be, and if there’s not they’re going to have to get one. How it hasn’t crossed their minds as a necessity for raising a child capable of flight is beyond him, but hey, they’ve had a lot on their minds.

“Hey!” Jack cries out, before Sam can reply, and both brothers lift their heads to look at him.

“Hey!” Dean calls back, which sends Jack into a peal of laughter. “He’s a fast learner,” he says to Sam.

Sam’s lips quirk into a smile. “Not bad for a three week old baby.”

Jack works on incorporating his newest words with his other words, singing out, “Hey! Hey Dean and Sam!”

“Hey Jack!” Sam and Dean call back, laughter curling around the edges of their words.

Jack hums, then, a long ponderous _hmmm,_ kicking his feet off the edge of the shelf. Whatever he’s contemplating, the conclusion he reaches seems to surprise him, and he gasps, clamoring to his feet. He turns his head from side to side, eyes searching, his breath picking up in sudden distress.

“Jack,” Sam says, slowly and calmly. “Are you okay?”

“Is he freaked out because he’s stuck up there?” Dean asks, loud enough for only Sam to hear him.

“I don’t know,” Sam whispers back. Before he can return to coaxing Jack to come down, Jack’s green eyes look down, meeting Dean’s gaze. Something about that stare pins Dean, freezing him in place. Instinctively, fear tremors through him. But the expression on Jack’s face isn’t one of malice; it’s one of confusion.

“Dean?” Jack says, no longer shrieking with delight at speaking, a question lifting the end of the name. Dean finds himself able to move again as Jack turns his eyes to Sam; he sees Sam’s shoulders tense under the intense stare. “Sam?”

Then he looks up, searching the room again. Dean can see his mouth moving, trying to form a new word, his wings drawn in tight against his back. Sam and Dean glance around the library, trying to decipher what it is that Jack is looking for.

“Cas?”

The name is like a lightning strike, painful, burning a hole in the crown of Dean’s head, tearing down through the whole of his body, zipping and scouring his insides; he stumbles, convinced his legs have been burnt out from under him. Sam’s at his side, arm holding onto his arm so that he won’t fall and he can’t even muster the strength to shrug him off and pretend that he’s fine.

“Castiel?” Jack calls out, getting the whole of the angel’s name after a few stammered first syllables. He’s frowning now, waiting for an answer. An answer that, Dean knows, will never come. But still, Jack calls, “Castiel?” in his young, confused voice. Innocently.

The sudden sound of wings – a sound Dean hasn’t heard in a long, long time, and it pierces him anew; his mouth tastes of blood and ash – and Jack is gone.

Sam spins around first – apparently he’s not thrown into a crisis at the mention of his dead best friend’s name – looking to see where Jack went.

Dean manages to turn then, too, but the relief at seeing the boy walking around the library doesn’t ease the creeping grief that makes it near impossible to swallow; he’s choking on it, and Jack is still calling out for Castiel, sounding so lost. He hadn’t realized that Jack would remember Castiel, that he’d _miss_ him, that he’d go looking for him; Castiel, who couldn’t kill him, who saved him, who would’ve raised him.

Dean steps towards Jack – _Dean,_ comes Sam’s low, worried warning – and the Jack turns his green, watery eyes to Dean as he approaches. “Where?” Jack cries.

Dean’s knees hit the faded runner-rug, arms outstretched, “C’mere,” He doesn’t need to say anything else, because Jack has apparently grasped nonverbal language better than he’s grasped speech, and Dean finds his arms full of a small winged body, all baby-fat and feathers.

“He’s not here, Jack.” Dean’s voice breaks, and then his heart follows after, again, when Jack makes a cry of understanding into his chest. “He’s gone.”

 _Gone, gone, gone,_ and then, _He left me you_ , Dean realizes then, like a light being let in, like heavy curtains drawn back for the dawn; it’s not enough, he knows; it won’t stop the hurt, and it’s not the same, it can never be the same, the day is new and different and he can’t go back; this loss won’t go, but he can carry on.

They’ll carry on together.

\--

Now

Dean’s not mad, he’s worried.

Jack is definitely grounded the moment that he and Sam find him, but Dean will just be happy that the kid is home safe and sound. That’s what matters, in the end, he tells himself, pocketing his phone after Jack fails to answer yet again.

The morning breeze has a toothy bite in it, the colder days of autumn arrived a week or so ago, and Dean can see his breath ghosting out in front of him. It’s hard to believe that it’s already October. Dean shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and treks along the small deer path through the woods that skirt along the bunker’s property. There’s a small creek that runs back here. They’ve had a fairly dry start to this fall, so it’s running low, the water slowly crawling its way over the pebbled bed. It means, unfortunately, there aren’t any muddy tracks to follow.

“Damn angels and their damn wandering,” Dean mutters under his breath. “Shoulda put tracking chips on—”

His toe catches on a larger stone and he stumbles, cursing; his hands fly out of his pockets in an attempt to stop himself from falling flat on his face, and he succeeds. He regains his footing.

And then he almost loses it again, almost falls over backwards, staggering.

Because there’s blood.

Crimson. Splattered and dragged over the cold gray of the stony bank.

Undeniable. Terrible. His vision goes white at the edges, the whole world narrowing to all of that blood.

“Sam!” He yells, startling the darkness of crows into a flight of black feathers and harsh, warning caws.

\--

Then

 

Sam finds him, one afternoon when he disappears.

He searches the whole bunker for him, heart jumping in his throat, reminding himself to remain calm, hoping to God (which, having met the guy, doesn’t bring much comfort) that Dean doesn’t get home early and finds that Sam has lost track of their ward.

He finds Jack sitting on a cot in the infirmary, a silver gleam in his small hands. He doesn’t look up at Sam, even though he certainly heard his loud sigh of relief before he walked in.

Sam’s had little luck deciphering Jack’s aging process ever since the afternoon on top of the bookshelf; physically, the boy has grown from infant to five-year old in a little over three months. It seems to be slowing down, as Jack gains more control over his powers – the scope and breadth of them uncharted, as unique as he is. He’s intelligent and far beyond his physical age. The glint of knowing in his eyes, green but sometimes faintly golden, is uncanny at times.  

Sam moves across the room and sits down on the cot next to Jack, the mattress dipping under his weight. He can feel the pensive cloud of thought, too strong for someone so small, but it makes sense. Humanity is a gale of emotions; angelic existence a swift and deft club of intensity. To be both, and to be a child atop that, isn’t something Sam can imagine.

Jack is quiet, staring down at the grace extractor in his hands, its sharp point glinting in the fluorescent lighting. It’s not the physical danger that makes Sam nervous, that makes him want to wrest the syringe from Jack and lock it away somewhere where it will never be found.

“Am I bad?”

Sam’s chest aches with the blow of that simply phrased question. He tries to swallow around the sudden tightness in his throat and his eyes water.

“Jack,” he begins, but the boy interrupts, his speech uncannily complex, his tone almost casual but for the slight waver.

“I wasn’t supposed to be born, was I?”

 _What do you say to that?_ Sam thinks, reeling. That you wouldn’t exist if I didn’t help set Lucifer free, again? That if we’d done our jobs better, we would’ve slammed the devil back where he belonged before he found Kelly Kline, or that we should never have trusted Crowley to not seize an opportunity for revenge? That he shouldn’t have been let loose in the first place, because I should have never gone down to the Cage? That if we’d actually given a damn and helped Cas with his crisis of self-worth, maybe he wouldn’t have thrown himself on the Lucifer-grenade I pulled the pin on?

That, _if I had done right, you wouldn’t be here._

Sam grabs onto the first non-terrible answer he can think of, even if all the others are true, and says, “You are a good thing that came out of a lot of bad things.”

Jack considers this. “Good can come from bad?” he asks, skeptical.

“In some ways, sometimes, yes,” Sam says. “I mean, ideally, we want to avoid the bad completely, and just make sure that we do what’s good,” he adds, in case Jack gets the mixed message that bad is good because good can come from it. “But sometimes, you just have to…play the hand you’ve been dealt, in the way that creates good, despite the bad. You make something good out of it,” he says, giving Jack a moment to let it sink in before he asks, “Does that make sense?”

Jack nods, humming in thought. “So…I can be good?”

“Absolutely, Jack, yes. ‘Good,’ it’s… It’s not what you are; it’s what you do. And you can do good.”

“What if I…accidentally do something bad?” He fiddles with the extractor again; _he knows his power_ , Sam thinks, _knows its potential for destruction, and worries about it. He doesn’t see how that makes him good, yet._

“You know, even Dean and I, we’ve done things that were…not so good,” Sam says, putting it lightly. There’s a long history of their sins, and he didn’t really wake up this morning thinking that he might recount them to the kid he’s raising.

Jack’s eyes are wide with surprise when he looks up at Sam. “But you’re the good guys!”

Sam can’t help but laugh a little at that, as if he and Dean were some comic book heroes. As if the world could be that simple. His laugh turns more cynical than he means it to. “And we’ve made a lot of mistakes. Part of living is that you make bad calls sometimes. And sometimes things go sideways and people get hurt because of it. But,” Sam continues, hoping that at least some of this is making sense to Jack; the kid seems to be hanging on to every word. “You learn from it. You try not to make the same bad decision twice. You ask for forgiveness. And, at the end of the day, you try to make sure that there’s no less good in the world than when you started.”

When Sam finishes speaking, Jack is staring down at his hands, the extractor still sitting in his palms. He seems lost in thought. Finally, though, he nods his head, slowly at first, but then more certainly.

“Then I will endeavor to do good,” Jack says, lifting his chin in resolution and meeting Sam’s eyes. Determination blossoms there. But then his demeanor shifts, shoulders slouching down, and he fidgets where he sits. “Will you help me? To make sure I do good?”

“Of course, Jack.” Sam wraps an arm around Jack’s shoulders, drawing him in for a side hug. With his other hand he reaches for the grace extractor, and Jack gives it freely. Sam sets it aside. He plans to lock it away later.  

 _We’re always going to be here for you_ , he almost says, but he sees the lie of the _always_ and the words falter.

“We’re going to be here for you,” he says instead, knowing he can mean it. “And you’re going to do good.”

\--

Now

“It’s not fresh Dean. Probably about a day old. I can’t be Jack’s.”

Sam brushes his hands on his knees before rising from his crouch on the creek-side. His heart had stuttered to a near-stop when he’d reached Dean, following his brother’s pale-faced stare to the blood upon ground. Dean’s face is still pale, and while he nods at Sam’s conclusion, it’s clear he’s not entirely unshaken.

“Probably a mountain lion or something,” Sam says, a – in his own admission – meager attempt at reassurance. He doesn’t even think there are mountain lions in Kansas. Dean just nods again, mutely, and then a new fear mutates across his face. Sam moves, places himself between Dean and the bloodstains, breaking that stare so that Dean meets his eyes. “Jack is stronger than a mountain lion, Dean.”

“Yeah. Right, right,” Dean finally says. “Probably just a dumb deer or something.”

Sam wants to tell him to try calling Jack again, but he knows Dean would handle the long unanswered rings to voicemail even worse than he himself would. If only there was some other way to get a hold of Jack…

“Wait. Dean, why don’t we try praying to him?” Sam exclaims, scoffing in disbelief that he didn’t think of that before.

Dean seems more hesitant about the idea. “Prayer’s kind of a one-way street, Sam,” he says, shoulders hunched, and not only from the cold.

“I know, but maybe he’ll hear it and come home. Maybe he just,” Sam reaches for an idea from the countless thoughts of what had happened to Jack that’ve been racing around his head. “Flew to the library and put his phone on silent.” Sam hopes that it’s true, tries to make himself believe it – that Jack will come back, any minute now, arms full of books, sheepish but proud of his solo adventure. It’s better than the alternative, where Jack is lying hurt in a ditch, or taken by angels or demons, somewhere lost and frightened and alone, somewhere where he might hear their prayers but be unable to get back to them.

“Alright, yeah, I’ll pray,” Dean says. He closes his eyes and rolls his shoulders. And then he’s quiet.

Sam waits. Gives him a moment in case his brother has developed some sort of pre-prayer ritual that Sam doesn’t know about. The dead leaves rattle on the trees. A crow caws in the distance and another answers from further away. “Uh, Dean?” Dean furrows his brow and shrugs at Sam. “Dean?” Sam repeats. “Aren’t you going to—”

“Shut up Sam, I am,” Dean hisses at him without opening his eyes.

Sam makes an _okay-then_ face that only the crow can see, if it’s watching. After a moment, Dean opens his eyes and throws an irritated glance to Sam. “What?” Sam says, defensively. “How was I supposed to know you were praying?”

“Uh, how about eyes closed? Head bowed? The general demeanor of a man who needs some peace and quiet to focus?”

“Sorry,” Sam says. “I just didn’t know you prayed silently.”

“Yeah, well, I learned. And got kinda good at it.” Dean starts walking away from the creek, back towards the bunker. Sam follows him.  He doesn’t know how to comment on the silent prayers, but he can guess how and why Dean became so well-versed in them; Castiel was absent from their lives for a while before he was killed in front of them.

They reach the back door of the bunker and Dean turns around, breath gusting into the autumn air on a sigh as he scans the open space one more time.

“We’ll find him, Dean,” Sam says, as another chill wind breezes past.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “And when we do, he’s grounded. For at least a month.”

\-- 

Then

“There’s only one way to test it and that’s to take him outside the bunker’s warding.”

“Oh, sure, and right into the waiting arms of the very pissed off God-Squad. Brilliant idea, Sammy.”

Jack has to keep the eye-roll he feels from being real. He’s perched on the edge of the map table, listening to the continuing argument between his guardians. It’s been going on for six minutes and fifteen seconds and Jack is weary of it. He knows the warding has worked, fiddling with the amulet around his neck. They couldn’t figure out how to get a child a tattoo, and there are no friendly angels left to carve Jack’s ribs with warding like theirs, and so this was the next best thing. Jack can feel it working, an unfamiliar hum skating over his bones as it settles. He also knows that he’s stronger than the angels, but he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t need them to think about him killing anything, let alone angels. Raw power doesn’t make up for millennia of combat anyways. Jack only has basic knowledge of how to work a gun and how to wield his angel blade, and that training hasn’t extended to actual combat in the field.

But he is curious to see what lies beyond the borders of the bunker and its property. The bunker is fascinating, and it feels like home – it _is_ home – but there’s so much more out there. There’s _something_ out there. He can feel it.

Finally, there’s a huffed _Fine_ from Dean and the jangle of keys, and Jack is sliding off the map table and bouncing on the balls of his feet as the brothers enter the room. Even Dean’s glum expression of defeat lightens a bit at seeing his excitement, Jack notices, grinning.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean waves him towards the stairs, towards the garage, and towards everything beyond. “Go on then.”

Jack takes the steps by twos and then when his (still short) legs fail to take them by threes he flaps his wings and lands at the top of the stairs.

“You’d think it was Christmas.” He hears Dean say to Sam before he flies the rest of the way to the garage.

Where he has to wait. Impatiently.

Jack knows it’s perspective; he’s only lived for just over three and a half months, but why do his guardian have to be so _old_?

(And flightless, but that one isn’t really their fault.)

It’s less than a minute later when he hears them come up the garage stairs. He watches their faces relax when they see that he hasn’t winged off to Canada, and once again he fights with himself to not roll his eyes.  

“Okay,” Dean says, catching his breath. He tried to take the stairs by two’s, too. “Ground rules. No zipping about flying once we’re on the road. You stay _inside_ the car at all times. Unless we get into trouble, then you fly straight back here, capiche?”

Jack nods dutifully. “I capiche.”

Dean’s smile reaches his eyes but there’s that bittersweetness again, the one that Jack’s been noticing more and more as he gets older. “Other than that,” Dean says, “Sammy, other important rules?”

“Driver picks the music,” Sam says. 

“Shotgun shuts his cakehole,” Dean finishes. "And no dogs in my car,” he adds, with a finger jab towards Sam.

“Dogs?” Jack asks, as Sam protests, “Oh come on, Dean, can’t you let that go?”

“No,” Dean says, grinning. Jack’s still wondering where the dogs come in when Dean tells him, “Alright, kid, hop in.” And then the dogs are forgotten.

Jack climbs into the back and slides over to the middle seat. Dean and Sam already explained to him why he can’t ride up front; apparently cops frown upon beings that look like human six year-olds riding in the front seat of cars without airbags. Jack thinks that’s ridiculous – _But I could make the officer forget he ever saw me,_ he’d said, but Dean had responded with, _Nope, in the back you go._  

He folds his arms on the back of the front seat and rests his chin on top of his forearms, breathing the scent of the soft, warm leather deep. It smells like Dean, and Sam, and memories, and home. A different kind of home than the bunker, but a home nonetheless. The Impala carries something akin to a soul, and he tentatively, with the upmost respect, greets her.  

Jack can’t tell if he’s imagining it, but he swears he feels her greet him back.

Sam hops into the shotgun seat as Dean slides into the driver’s, and then the engine is rumbling and they’re rolling forward from the garage.

It’s quiet and tense – Jack can see it in Dean’s shoulders, and even in Sam’s – as they approach the border of the heavily-sigiled property. It has the opposite effect on him; Jack already feels less cramped, the warding of the bunker itself falling away from around him.

Dean keeps glancing in the rearview to check on him, as if angels or demons are going to swoop into the back of the car and spirit him away. Jack reaches up to touch the amulet around his neck. He hasn’t been worried about this, not really, but everyone is holding their breath, so Jack does too, watches Dean’s hands tighten on the steering wheel as they draw closer and closer, Sam straightens in his seat like he’s bracing for a fight—

And then they’re passing the last sigil, and then it’s behind them.

Nothing happens; the Impala purrs on along the road. Sam turns in his seat to look at Jack, and Dean looks at Sam before throwing a glance over his shoulder to check on Jack too.

“I’m fine,” Jack says, because he gets the sense if he doesn’t they’re not going to relax. “You should watch the road, Dean,” he adds, as a suggestion.

The road is empty, of course – hardly anyone has reason to travel through rural Kansas – but Dean turns back to face the front. Jack catches the lift of his eyebrows in the mirror, the crinkle of a smile around his eyes.

“Back-seat driver,” Dean mumbles, affection lighting his soul as the cloud of his worry mostly dissipates. Sam’s got that light too, and the smile is clear on his face; he doesn’t have to turn around.

Jack perks up more at a sudden thought, asks, “Can I drive?”

“No!” Sam and Dean say, in unison. He’s surprised that it’s Sam who sounds more vehement about it; he catches Dean’s flicker of pride.

“When you’re old enough, we’ll teach you,” Sam says.

“When I’m actually old enough or when I _look_ old enough?” Jack asks. Sam’s brows furrow at the question, as if he’s forgotten about Jack’s aging process. “Because I could look sixteen by next week,” he continues, feeling smug and knowing that he looks it, if Sam’s expression of humored resignation is anything to go by. He doubts it’ll happen, that he’ll jump that much, but still. It could happen.

Dean steps in with, “When your feet are long enough to reach the pedals, Short Stuff, then we’ll talk.”

He should’ve grown into a taller six year-old, Jack thinks, sighing; not that he’s had much choice over his “age” and height so far. Now that he’s more aware of himself, though, he hopes he’ll be able to direct his next growth spurt somewhere into his early teens. For the moment, however, he’s happy how he is.

“That’s fair,” Jack finally agrees. “Are we still going to the park?” Lovewell State Park is less than an hour away, and while it’s still _Kansas,_ it’s still somewhere that isn’t the bunker. Though Jack would even settle for visiting a gas station on the side of the highway.

Sam and Dean’s silent conversation is brief and goes something like _We did say that we would_ (Sam), and _Kansas?_ (Dean, and Jack knows because there’s the grimace; their home may be in Kansas but they don’t have to like it), _Where else?_ (Sam, though he seems open to traveling further), _We’ll go somewhere better next time._ Then Dean’s, _Yeah. It’ll be good to get out,_ before he says, aloud,

“‘Course, kiddo. We’ll grab some food from the gas station, make a day of it.”

“Gas station food?” Sam frowns. “I thought we agreed to eat better—”

“If you want to walk two hundred miles to the nearest Whole Foods, Sammy, I’ll drop you off,” Dean grumbles. “We’ll get the kid a granola bar or something, too, some fruit snacks or whatever.”

“You know fruit snacks aren’t actually a substitute for real fruit, right?”

The Impala picks up speed as the freedom of the open road beckons, and Jack tunes out the brothers’ bickering in favor of watching the fields roll by, the trees with their green leaves beginning to freckle orange and red as September dawns.

“It’s like flying!” Jack exclaims, pressing his face closer to the window. Sam and Dean can’t see it, but his wings are spreading out on his back, the feather-tips trembling. “Like flying, but slower.” Dean chuckles, and there’s a flash of amusement from Sam as he repeats the word _slower_ , which draws a response from Dean – more banter – but Jack’s still focused on the movement, on the rhythm of the car on the road.

It’s amazing, but there’s something missing, something he tries to remember; he tilts his head and the memory shakes loose—

\--

It’s dark from his perspective, but not entirely. He floats in warmth and in love, which is a light of its own. There’s an anxiety around him, but it’s muted by his contentment, by the protection of his mother. Something else reaches through him, a rhythm, a sound, a tune – whatever it is, he likes it – and he feels his mother’s humor rise and he curls around it. He likes the sound even more now, now that it has pleased his mother.

“What?” A rougher, lower voice asks, but not unkindly. The angel, and Jack’s grace flickers towards him in affection.

“Nothing,” his mother replies. Her humor brightens. “I just didn’t expect an angel to listen to Zeppelin.”

“It’s good road music,” the angel says, a touch defensively. And then, after a moment, he adds, “It was a gift.”

“Someone gave you a mixtape in twenty-seventeen?”

“Is that strange?”

“It’s not exactly common,” his mother says, and then curiosity joins her humor. “Someone must like you a lot.”

There’s quiet, and then the sound of shifting in a seat. His mother’s humor dims, but doesn’t fade entirely; it’s replaced with a gentle understanding as the angel speaks again,

“He might’ve, once. But after what I’ve done…” A long exhale, and his grace wonders at an angel who chooses to breathe. “Dean is an incredibly forgiving man. But I cannot dare expect that I haven’t exhausted that forgiveness now.” There’s a long moment of silence that’s only filled with the upbeat strains of the road music.

“I’m sorry,” his mother says quietly. He feels the pressure of her hand rubbing over the swell of her belly before she wraps her arms around herself.

“No, Kelly, you don’t need to apologize,” the angel says, firmly. “It was my decision, I chose…”

\--

The memory tapers off, leaving a strange but familiar weight in Jack’s chest, happiness and sadness together both at once.

“Do you have any road music?” Jack asks, hoping it will ease his longing. He can hear that the radio is on, softly in the background, but it’s not the _right_ music.  

“Road music?” The question is in Dean’s voice and in his eyes as he look at Jack in the rear-view.

“Yeah, road music,” Jack repeats, as if the issue was that Dean simply hadn’t heard him. When nothing registers, he says it again, phrases it as a question in case it jogs Dean’s memory. “Road music?” Sam looks just as clueless, shrugging when Dean throws a questioning glance to him.

The melody is difficult to hum because it’s complex, complicated, hard to pin down – that’s what he likes about it, the way it sounds like _motion_ – and the brothers are quiet as they listen, and Jack knows he’s not getting it right. “It’s got the guitars, and the rock, and the shouting,” Jack stops humming to elaborate. “And something about love?”

“Sing it again,” Sam says, brow furrowed, trying to figure out what Jack’s asking like he’s trying to identify whether someone’s hunting a ghoul or a shapeshifter.

Jack hums it again, best he can, but he’s just making _noise_ , not music.  

He flaps his wings in irritation and feels the energy surge from him before he’s aware of it. The Impala’s dashboard lights flare and the radio flinches into static, the sound of classic rock buzzing in and out of clarity until:

There’s the quick drumbeats, and the strong, certain chords of a guitar, the wail of vocals, and then the quick-sung lyrics _We come from the land of the ice and snow!_ But it’s not the one Jack _wants_ , suddenly, and the radio crackles, and then it’s drums and cymbals and guitar, _been a long time, been a long time –_ no, that’s not the one either; Jack doesn’t hear Dean’s sharp intake of breath, doesn’t feel the Impala swerve, doesn’t hear Sam’s exclamation, doesn’t feel her speed up, then start to slow; he’s focused; harmonica and _bring it on home_ – not right either; the Impala is pulling off to the shoulder; he’s got it narrowed, _13_ and he can’t see the rest, _there’s a light in your eye that keeps shining; you really oughta know, oh, oh; love you each and every day; you shook me; I’m about to lose my worried mind –_ someone’s calling his name, but Jack’s eyes are closed, he sees the golden threads of music, weaves his etheric hands through them – _together we should go_ – there’s a _story_ , here, he realizes, an epiphany, a message, between snapshots of lyrics remembered through a womb, played over a truck radio and now this radio, here, even though the engine’s killed – _all my love; now’s the time, the time is now to sing my song; I’m gonna give you my love; Did you ever really need someone_ —

“ _Jack!_ ”

Hands on his shoulders, shaking him; Jack’s eyes fly open.

He’s back in the Impala. The slow strums of _Ten Years Gone_ lingers on the radio, the singer crooning about _holding on_ , _holdin’ on_. Sam’s wide, frightened eyes are staring at him. Jack blinks, half-confusion, half-wonder.

“Sam,” he says, blinking again, dazed. The car is parked; the driver’s seat is empty, the door slammed shut. He feels half-present, grace unsettled like his wings still fanned in the ether behind him. There’s a coiled _something_ under his ribs now, and he doesn’t understand it, not yet, but he instinctively tucks it away for safekeeping. “Sam,” he repeats, grounding himself now.

“Jack, what—? Are you okay? What was that?”

“It was the road music.” His voice is faint with the awe still glowing in his chest. “It wasn’t just music, Sam, it was— it was—” he fumbles for a word and can’t find one to encompass it all. “It was _something_ ; it was my mom, and Castiel, and I remembered and I had to hear it again, and then I _heard_ it and I felt...” He trails off. He doesn’t know how to express it.    

The worry doesn’t leave the lines of Sam’s face, but his eyes soften. He seems to be searching for words, too, but can’t find the right ones either.

“Is Dean okay?” Jack shifts in his seat, trying to find Dean. He follows Sam’s gaze over his shoulder, through the rear window, where Dean stands leaning against the Impala’s trunk, his back to them, arms crossed over his chest and his head dropped between tense shoulders.

“He will be,” Sam says carefully. Jack reminds himself that something’s not really a lie if it’s said based on hope. “Listen, Jack,” Sam starts to say, and Jack turns back to look at him. “September is this week, and you should know that Dean—”

The door latch clicks and Dean slides back in behind the wheel. Sam cuts himself off. The quiet is so tense that it’s almost a physical weight. The radio’s gone silent.

“Dean,” Sam begins, softly. He reaches a hand out to his brother’s arm.

Dean just shakes his head. But he doesn’t shake off Sam’s hand.

Jack feels older now, wiser, but sadder. He gathers his grace around the Impala, around Sam and Dean; suddenly the clear blue sky above seems too vulnerable, the open road too open.

They’re parked in the bunker’s garage between one heartbeat and the next. Sam is the only one who looks around, startled at the sudden change in environment. Dean must have his eyes closed.

“We’re home, Dean,” Jack says quietly.

He means it as something like an apology.

He takes it as something like forgiveness when Dean lets out a slow exhale and nods.

\-- 

Now

The pulse beneath his ribs pulls him across the country, but only so far, and he slips out of flight somewhere in central Idaho.

He’s not sure if it was a turbulence in the celestial ether, still low on power ever since Heaven’s eject button got slammed, or if the deviation from his flight plan originated from himself – if he simply wasn’t ready to take the whole cross-country flight in one go. The farthest he’s ever flown in his short life is about a dozen miles from the bunker, after all.

Whatever the reason, he lands, famished even though he just ate. He takes stock of his surroundings, and heads towards the golden arches set against the faintest oranges and pinks of the gray pre-dawn sky like a beacon. The cashier gives him a strange look as he pushes his cash towards her, standing on his tiptoes to reach across the counter. But soon his number is called, and he has his meal – one of those delicious breakfast sandwiches with bacon, the one that Sam complains about Dean feeding him when he should be eating grain or grape-nuts or yogurt. He ordered a second meal too, stashing it in his pack. He suspects he’ll need it.

He bites his hashbrown in half and takes a sip of his milkshake, sitting at one of the tables outside. It’s odd to be on his own like this, and his instincts tell him to be wary. Angels, demons, monsters – but humans, too, are something to watch out for. For now, however, there’s hardly anyone around.

The landscape is beautiful, the earth rolling steeply around the valley. Hills much bigger than the ones in his Kansas home. Mountains, maybe, he thinks. He’s not quite sure. After this, he should ask Sam and Dean if they can travel more. Go on a road trip, hear their stories, eat new food.

It’s nice to get out. Even if he does miss Sam and Dean.

When the prayer comes, it surprises him; he starts and nearly tumbles from his seat.

 _Jack, buddy? Not quite sure if you can hear this, but…_ Dean’s voice rings clear in his head, even though it’s a little muted, like hearing someone talk to you from the next room. Jack can hear the strain, knows it’s frustration, can tell that Dean is worried. He’s been doing fairly well up to this point – it’s why he turned his phone to silent – but now he feels the pang of guilt at hurting Dean and Sam like this. _We’re worried sick about you, and you gotta come home. Alright?_

The prayer goes silent and Jack thinks that it’s over but then Dean continues, _I’m not gonna lie to you, I’m, uh, I’m gonna be pretty pissed off, but all Sam and I really want is for you to come home, safe, okay?_

 _Just come home_ , Dean’s prayer insists, pleading. _Come home_.

 _I will_ , Jack thinks back. _I’m fine. I’ll come home._

But prayer isn’t a two-way channel. Dean can’t hear him. He opens the small pocket on his pack where he stashed his phone and pulls out it out. _Dean Missed Calls (4)._ _Sam Missed Calls (2)._

Jack lifts his eyes up to the ever-lightening sky, know that dawn is an hour away where he is going. He’s too far for his guardians to reach him, although some part of him suspects that Dean might try. He sighs and looks down at the phone in his hands. The screen’s gone dark. He could easily slip it back into his bag, pretend he never saw the notifications. He could forget about it. Or he could text them back. Those are his options, and the moments that he spends deciding are moments lost.

_What would Dean do, if he were me?_

Jack opens the messaging app, and opens his previous messages to both Sam and Dean. _I’m fine_ , he types. And then he adds, _@ library. Be home soon_. He presses send.

Before they have a chance to respond, he puts the phone back in his bag. He finishes off his meal in a few big bites and tosses the trash in the bin before glancing around. The town is still quiet, still sleeping. A lone car makes it way down a nearby street, but aside from the workers inside the restaurant, nobody is around. Jack waits until the car lazily turns away down a side street, double-checks to make sure no one is looking his way, and then once again he takes flight.

\--

Then

September brings with it the first chills of the cold season, and the bitter acridity of grief.

Jack feels it gathering, heavy and suffocating, building as the weeks pass, slowly coalescing like the blood-red leaves on the early autumn trees.

He is older now, grown again, and he can feel the budding of another growth spurt. He understands more and more each day. But there is still so much he that doesn’t. He wants to, though; wants to understand more of this world, more of what Sam and Dean have seen and where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Wants to understand his own role, his place, his purpose. Who he is. Who he will be.  

It’s quiet, this morning. Far too quiet. It’s just the three of them in the bunker for the most part, aside from the occasional trusted hunter who sometimes lodges here, and so it’s never loud, but it’s never this quiet. It unsettles him as he steps out of his room, stomach grumbling for breakfast.   

Sam isn’t in the kitchen, and neither is Dean; usual for Sam, who runs in the mornings, and unusual for Dean, who never got the hang of sleeping in; he’s often found somewhere doing something, or at the very least eating. The coffee pot on the counter is quiet and empty, and there are no dishes in the sink.

He’s crunching on Cap’n Crunch – the Oops! All Berries kind that had Sam’s eyes rolling all the way into the back of his head ( _Dean, come on, the kid doesn’t need_ that _much sugar and neither do_ you) – when Sam comes in, extra sweaty today. Jack wrinkles his nose. Sam doesn’t notice him, just drifts into the kitchen for water before leaving again. Jack looks down at his hands, making sure that he casts a shadow, in case he’s accidentally turned invisible again. There’s darkness on the granite under his palms, and he’s relieved for only a moment before he starts to worry. He hasn’t been around for that long – he’s four months old _today_ , he realizes – but he and the Winchesters have fallen into a familiar routine of life.

He washes his bowl and spoon, the stream of water just shy of deafening in the quiet of the bunker, and then he pads out from the kitchen. He trails his senses out as far as they will go, standing in the junction between the living spaces and the rest of the bunker, picks up the faint sound of a shower before his range falters.

And then he’s standing back where he was before, alone.

The rest of the morning passes just as quiet and lonely; when Sam passes him in the hall on the library to man the call center they’ve established he gives him a nod and a soft, “Hey Jack,” and that’s all. Jack still hasn’t seen Dean.

He’s used to their presence, he realizes. Used to the way their bodies take up space, the way their souls and emotions shimmer in the background, the cadences of their breathing. They’re not all always together; they each have their own spaces, but today there’s…distance.   

There’s a deep-seated _wrongness_ that Jack can’t tune out. He clicks off Netflix and the episode of _Cosmos_ that he’s on and slides off his bed. He pokes his head into the hallway and, not surprisingly, finds it vacant and silent.

He pads out of his room, through the halls and into the library. He pauses in the doorway, though, and considers going back, waiting all of this out; could it pass? Or is this forever, now? Sam is sitting at a table, hunched, his head supported in his hands. The phones are quiet. It’s too quiet and Jack wants to scream just to have something break the monotony. He has the feeling that Sam wouldn’t mind.

Jack’s feet make a sound as he descends the steps and Sam jerks as if waking up.

“Jack, hey, uh,” Sam says, straightening, and he sniffles, brushing his hair out of his face. “What’s up? Did you need something? I was just about to, uh, research this case for…” He reaches for books that aren’t there and stares into the empty space.

Jack pulls out the chair across from Sam and sits down. He tilts his head a little and studies Sam’s face, reads the pain there that’s mirrored in his soul, all sharp and scintillating like broken glass.   

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jack asks, feeling wrong-footed. He doesn’t know how to help, only that he _wants_ to, and this is the way that Sam so often helps him.

Sam smiles at that – not a happy smile, one that’s sad and rueful and doesn’t make it to his eyes. Jack thinks he sees a flicker of pride, though. “Do you want to hear a story?”

That wasn’t the answer that Jack expected. “Yes,” he says.

“Come on,” Sam says, pushing back his chair and standing up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

\--

The story, Jack can tell, has been toned down and abridged for him; despite his maturity, the Winchesters still so often treat him like a young child. The apocalypse must have been far more harrowing, their various temptations and struggles more severe, the blood and the pain and the loss so much greater. But that’s not the point of the story that Sam tells as they walk along the path that borders the property, to the road beyond it.

It’s not about the bad – it’s about the good they’ve done with it.

Jack listens to the story, from beginning to end – though nothing really ever ends, does it? – told in a great, sweeping arc as they walk down the road. And Sam, he really does start at the _beginning_ , when two brothers with nothing but each other set off on the road together. How that road led to death – Sam’s first, and then Dean’s traded for Sam’s – and then to Hell, for Dean first this time. How an angel fought to get him out, raising Dean back to life again. How that angel was tentative ally, Castiel, then friend, then enemy, friend again and then brother. _Cas_. Family. Someone they loved. Someone Dean loved.

Jack hears about the times they lost Castiel: to himself, to angels, to Leviathans, to Lucifer. How Dean fought to find him again, to get him back, to bring him home. How there’s no chance of bringing him home now. How there’s only grief left.

“A lot of this story is Dean’s,” Sam says. His voice is tight, but his soul is lighter, less jagged. “There are things that I don’t know. That I probably won’t ever know.” He stops on the side of the road, in the warm sunlight of autumn, and Jack stops beside him. “Maybe one day if you ask him about it he’ll be able to tell you. But what I do know is that Dean loved Cas. More than just a brother. And when you lose somebody that you love like that…” Sam closes his eyes, turns his face towards the sun and the blue, blue sky.   

“Dean is hurting,” Jack says quietly, looking towards where the bunker rests. He thinks he can feel the pain from here, muted and muffled like it’s hidden under a blanket. It’s like the pain he feels when he misses his mother. But his pain is less acute – he never knew his mother, not really. He doesn’t know what it’s like to not live without her. It must be a greater pain, to know someone so deeply and then to lose them.

“Yeah.”

“Will he get better?” Jack asks. He already knows the answer, though.

“Hurt like that it…it stays with you. It doesn’t get easier, but it gets…familiar,” Sam says. “You learn how to carry it. You learn to let people help you carry it, too.”

Jack nods. He’s learning how to carry his own grief, fumbling though he may be. Humanity is fraught with so much pain. But it is also full of resilience. “Today is the day Castiel and Dean met,” Jack says, and he feels the truth thrum from that statement. Sam nods.

The day Dean was saved from Hell, all those years ago. Today, nothing will come to save Dean from this, now.

Jack’s soul aches. His family is hurting and all he wants to do is help.

He should be strong enough to fix this.

\--

Sam and Jack go about their day in the bunker quietly then, but they do so a little more at peace. Peace Jack wishes he could bring to Dean, who doesn’t turn up for lunch, or for dinner. Whatever he says to Sam when he knocks to ask him to eat leaves Sam’s face understanding but drawn tight with sadness. Sam carries a plate of food and sets it outside Dean’s door each time anyways. Jack doesn’t know if he eats it, but when he peers down the hall towards Dean’s room the plates are gone.

It’s getting late when Jack senses it, the sharp peaking of grief; sadness is always worse in the darkness, Jack knows, and even underground the night is certainly dark. He smells it, then, in the air – the bitter tang of liquor; alcohol is no foreign scent to the bunker, but this is stronger than beer, and it mixes dangerously with the grief.

Jack watches the struggle on Sam’s face, the old question of whether to give Dean the space to work through this on his own, or to go to him.

The latter wins out after Jack retreats to his room; Jack hears Sam’s careful footsteps approach Dean’s room and knock. And then knock again. There’s a quiet, “Dean?” and the turn of the doorknob, and a moment of silence before the door closes and Sam’s footsteps pass Jack’s door again, heading down the hall towards the other rooms.

Curious, and worried, Jack slips out of his room and follows silently.

When Sam reaches the other door he opens it carefully, and Jack watches him hold his breath. “Dean,” Sam sighs, and there’s both relief and pain in the name.

Dean doesn’t respond. There’s no greeting, but there’s also no rejection, no shout for Sam to leave, and so Sam enters, leaving the door open behind him.

Jack hesitates; this is private. This is not his grief; he knew Castiel but for a moment, and only by voice and by the shape of his grace. What right has he, to be privy to this?

And yet he remains where he is. The smell of liquor burns his nose, and the cloud of grief is strong enough to be tangible, but he remains.  

“Don’t need a lecture ‘bout drinking,” Dean finally says, words gruff but lilting into each other, as if they’re slippery, uncertain things.

“That’s not why I’m here,” Sam says. Dean grunts, slightly suspicious but tolerating. There’s the soft sound of him sitting on the bed, and then a bottle being passed, and then the sound of liquor tilted back and swigged. Jack steps closer, and then he steps into invisibility, cloaking himself to peer through the doorway to see Sam pass the bottle of bourbon back to Dean.

“Nine years today,” Dean says. The amber liquid sloshes in the glass as he takes another drink. “Son’abitch should’ve lived forever and what did he get? Not even nine years with my sorry ass. Hell, he spent half of it running away from me.” His laugh is nothing more than a breath, and there’s no humor in it.

It’s the bitterness Jack knows is in him – on the fringes of his soul, never at its core – but he’s never seen it on the surface like this. It’s like a terrible, burning thing, like smoke coiling and choking, clouding over the light with darkness.

“Dean, you know he didn’t regret any of it.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean takes another swing before handing it back to Sam. “Never did get around to teaching him common sense.”

Sam takes a long, slow drink, trying to buy time to find the right words.

Dean speaks first, though, softly, looking around the room. “It’s so…empty, Sam. Why is it so _empty_?” His eyes don’t settle on any one thing because there is hardly anything on which to settle.

Jack has only stepped inside room fifteen once, about a month ago out of curiosity when he had a moment to himself to wander. It’s plain. Unremarkable. Sometimes in his explorations he encounters the imprints of those who lived here before them – not ghosts, just memories, though he never mentions them to Sam and Dean – but this room really is _empty_. There’s no heart in it, as if whoever stayed here never truly let themself be present, as if their heart was elsewhere. _His_ heart, Jack knows; this was Castiel’s room.

For all the love he knows Sam and Dean felt, and still feel – love is energy, Jack is understanding, and it never dies; he can see it still burning bright in their souls, complicated by grief but still _shining_ , Dean’s especially – for their fallen friend, it doesn’t seem like Castiel stuck around much. Surely he knew that he belonged here, that he was wanted?

“He probably wasn’t used to having stuff, you know,” Sam says, and Dean takes the bottle back again. “He was, what’d he say that one time, a…?”

“‘Wavelength of celestial intent,’” Dean quotes, and a fondness ticks at the corners of his mouth.

“Probably pretty hard to be anything but a minimalist after millennia of that,” Sam says, and there’s a bittersweet smile tugging at his lips too.

“We were just a blip in his life,” Dean says, staring down at the bottle in his hands.

“We were more than that. We were his family.”

“Some family,” Dean scoffs. “We kicked him around just as much as his winged dick siblings.”

Sam doesn’t protest, doesn’t argue. Jack watches the air color with regret. He breathes despite the heaviness on his own chest, swallows around the tightness in his own throat.

“I took this ancient, holy being – an angel, Sam, an _angel_ – and I pulled him down into the blood and the muck with me. All because I—” Dean cuts himself off, swallows the words down, closes his eyes. “And it got him hurt. And it got him killed.”

“You have to give him a little more credit than that, Dean,” Sam says, and Dean opens his eyes and lifts his head to Sam, his expression a hesitant question. “He knew what he was doing. He chose this. He chose us. He chose _you_.”

Dean looks away, lifts the bottle, drinks deeply, one swallow, then two, then three.

“Dean,” Sam says, softly. Dean doesn’t turn his head back. He lowers the whiskey, but not far.

“Cas loved you, Dean,” Sam says, and it’s sincere and gentle, and firm in the way that means _there is no argument here_. “He said he loved you.”

“No, no.” Dean shakes his head. He stands, and steps back from Sam and what he’s saying, arguing anyways; it’s a swirling cocktail of pain and fear and grief and Jack’s heart is straining under all of this weight. “He said that to all of us, he said— he said, _all of you_.”

“He did,” Sam says, placating. “But he said ‘I love you’ first. Who else was that meant for but you? Me?” Sam asks. “Mom?” His reach for a little humor doesn’t make it to Dean, who is still shaking his head, chest heaving. “He loved _you_ , Dean,” Sam says gently.

“It doesn’t count!” The words explode from Dean, and Jack jumps at the sudden burst of volume. His wings fluff and extend to keep him from tipping over backwards. Sam doesn’t even flinch.

“Why not?”

“He said it when he was _dying_ , Sam, goddammit! That doesn’t count!” Dean’s got his fist clenched around the bottleneck so tightly Jack worries it will shatter in his hand. “And he didn’t— he didn’t even _look_ at me.” His voice cracks, a fragile thing holding back a flood of emotions. “And I know I didn’t look at him, either, but…” Dean’s quiet voice trails off.

“Did you ever talk about it, afterwards?”

Dean looks away and that’s answer enough. “I meant to, I just… I never— I was just happy he was _alive_ ,” he says, snagging on the word, caught in a time when it was true. “I didn’t know how to talk about it, and then he was gone, _again_.” His voice lowers, deepening, sounding like anger, and Jack hears the molecules of glass strain under the tightness of his hand.

“He was doing what he thought was best—”

“I don’t care what he thought, he was wrong!” Dean paces, back and forth through the same steps. “He didn’t listen, and he played me, he didn’t— he didn’t care!” His voice rises; the dam buckling, the flood surging forwards.

“Dean, that’s not true; everything he did, the way he looked at you, he cared, he loved you—”

“ _If he loved me he shouldn’t have left!_ ” It’s hard to tell what comes first, the shout or the shattering: the bottle explodes against the wall, glass and golden liquid catching the fluorescent lighting, showering and shining as they fly and fall. And its breaking breaks something in Dean.

“He left, Sammy, he left – I didn’t, I should’ve, he should’ve _stayed_ , this— this was his _home_ and I _loved_ him, Sam, I loved him, I love, I love—”

The sobs tear their way through him, up and out of his throat, shaking him, and Sam crosses the distance to him, wraps his arm around him. Dean clings to him, and the whimpers and hitches of breath continue and those words, _I loved him,_ repeat, and Sam rocks him, slowly, shushing, his own shoulders trembling—

It’s too much; far too much, and Jack wings away, feeling guilty that he has this option, and that he takes it, that he is able to flee from this sorrow simply because it isn’t _his_.

He lands under the faintest sliver of the moon, gasping in breath after breath.

It’s so dark, and he falls down to his knees.

He didn’t know that love could hurt so much.

\-- 

Now

Jack lands gracefully, finally at his destination, and folds his wings against his back. The ground crunches beneath his sneakers as he turns in a slow circle, taking it all in. It’s a long way from home, thousands of miles, and Jack doesn’t remember this place, not really – there’s a jumble of sound and light and the heavy, heavy weight of grief; the memory in this place is not his own, and it echoes and thrums around him as he walks forward, purposeful and certain.

But he slows when he sees it, low and dark in the pre-dawn light like the skeletal remains of some great beastly creature, wood turned charcoal; the funeral pyre could easily be mistaken for the remains of a bonfire built by vacationers, but Jack knows better. He knows what happened here. He places his hand against the char and jerks it away as if burned by fire and not just by memory – white cloth, smoke, heat, flesh to bone – he cannot bear this, the shape of Sam and Dean’s grief lingering here like ghosts, ripped into this place like the scar in the universe he can just make out, hovering where the universe was torn by his birth.

He cannot erase that scar, nor any of the others inflicted on that night. What has happened will always have happened. But he has learned to heal wounds, to set things right. To do _good_.

He moves, then, towards the silent house. The front door unlocks with no more force than a thought, and swings opens into the dust and dark.

The spirit notices him immediately – he can feel its gaze trailing behind him, can feel the cold air following him from empty room to empty room on the first floor, skirting around the edges of his periphery – but otherwise it leaves him alone. It is restless and burdened; the house has remained empty, unrented and unsold, not because the spirit is dangerous, but because no one can stand the pressing sense of loss, the ache for comfort, for peace. Everyone who steps over the threshold is pained with a sort of homesickness, a loneliness like a moth seeking light and finding only darkness. Jack feels it sharply. It hangs thick in the air, makes it hurt to breathe. It’s hard to swallow, and Jack holds onto the dusty banister as he ascends the stairs.

It’s equally dusty and dim on the second floor. He skims his hand along the walls, knowing his mother walked here, knowing that her fingerprints left traces here, and maybe he can touch them, and in some way it would be like touching her hand in the way he never got to. But the passing time has faded her from this place, and he doesn’t find her here. He drops his hand.

Jack is drawn to a room at the end of the hall as if pulled by an invisible string.

The far wall is all painted over, beige and numb, in an attempt to erase what lies beneath; Jack touches the wall with a sort of reverence, and the flashes come: the scent of paint, the weight of a brush in the hand, _JACK_ spelled out neatly over swirling colors, an act of love. When he removes his hand the wall is blank and loveless again. The spirit presses cold against his back and he shivers, nudging it away with the warmth of his wings. It draws back. It just wants to help, Jack senses, but it doesn’t even know who it is anymore, who it’s supposed to be. Jack knows, though. He felt it the moment he arrived. He landed so close to the spot where the angel Castiel died.

The spot where a newborn soul was expelled in a blast of energy, severed from itself, tumbling out lost and confused and incomplete. And who would have come for it? Who would have known to? What angel has a soul?

The soul calls out now, lonely in a directionless and wordless prayer that took so long to reach him, nestling in the back of his mind and tugging at the light under his ribs. The soul isn’t even sure what it wants. It only knows that there is something to be wanted.

“It’s okay,” Jack says, aloud and softly, attempting to push a measure of peace towards it, soothing it. There is another reason that he’s here. Something else that he must do first, something he must find.

Something that the Winchesters wouldn’t have known to look for.

He finds it, tucked up into a corner, pressed against the baseboard and tucked behind the old radiator, missed by whoever cleaned after he and Sam and Dean left this place.

The flash drive is an inch of plastic and metal, covered in dust. It’s smaller than the palm of Jack’s hand. It can barely hold four gigabytes.  

To him, it’s the most important thing in the entire universe. He feels the thumb-print of his mother pressed onto its surface. He can still sense the echo of her, the imprint of her memory.

This is what she had to say to him, and he swallows thickly, heartbeat hammering, suddenly afraid. What if she resented him? What if she looked at the camera, looking him square in the eye, and blamed him for her death? Or what if she feared him – her message only a desperate plea to not become his father?

Jack closes his eyes. Wraps his hand tightly around the drive, careful not to break it.

 _No_ , he steadies himself. She’d said _I love you_ ; in her last moments with her last breath she’d made the effort to say those words, _I love you_ , even though she didn’t know he would hear them.

He opens his eyes. Crosses his legs as he sits on the dusty hardwood. Retrieves his tablet and plugs in the drive. He takes a deep breath, and then he presses play.

His first view of his mother is of a woman smiling, tears in her eyes.

\--

Then

Castiel knows he is going to die.

Knows it the instant the blade sinks deep into Lucifer’s gut, in the hanging moment before the devil’s eyes burn their bleeding red.

But, if he’s honest, in that space where he turns, feeling the give in the traction in the dead sand of a dying world, death’s chilled shadow has trailed at his heels for a time now. Some steps it has lagged behind him, and in its quiet padding he nearly forgets its presence, but at other times it tugs at him, pushes and pulls and nips its fangs into him. That night with Ramiel and the barn he’d been so certain that it had finally caught him by his throat, ready to crush down on his windpipe, to splash his lifeblood out over its teeth – but no. Mercilessly, it let him go. He’d lived, and it resumed its slow and pacing hunt.

The tear in space and in time is before him now and he reaches out to it, to its strange warmth running soft but swift like a current in a stream. He steps through, and he only has one want.

It isn’t to live; although, as the world flashes bright and golden around him in the mere second it takes to go from one universe to another, he surely wouldn’t argue against it. But, even they took the ending and ripped it up, told fate to – in Dean’s expression that he’s found such fondness for – _bite them_ , this is how his story ends. This is how it was always going to end.

He has always been hurtling towards the earth, bound for impact.

The light fades, and he’s standing alone in the dark.

Except it isn’t dark. And he isn’t alone.

The light of the moon shines pale but steady from its faithful place in the sky. The lights from the house are on, and their warm gold trickles onto the beach to join the soft silver of the moonlight. But none of these are as bright as the light of seeing Dean and Sam, even if only for the last time. He has moments, portions of seconds that are tick-tick-ticking by so very quickly; he doesn’t see or hear Lucifer come up behind him, but he senses him, knows he’s there – the frayed remains of the feathers on his ragged wingtips shift in the faint breeze of energy as Lucifer enters the rift.

Castiel looks at Sam. He looks at Dean.

He looks at his family and his heart swells so much that he’s sure _this_ is going to kill him because it _aches_.

He’s bought them time. And they’re the Winchesters, they go up against impossible odds and they win, absurdly and miraculously and persistently. Castiel is an angel with hardly a scrap of faith in anything: a walking contradiction, blasphemy and heresy and so, so very fallen – but he has faith in these two men. They will do what he failed to do. And they will make the most of the time given to them.

But for him, for Castiel, there’s no time – no time to say the parting words that bubble up on his tongue, and _God_ – though God is God-only-knows-where now, long gone – he hopes all of it is written on his face, shining in his eyes. A refrain of the outpouring of truth that terrible, rotting night in the barn; _you changed me, thank you, you’re my family, I love all of you._

 _I love you_ , he thinks, meeting Dean’s eyes one last time. The fractions of seconds are gone. Time on earth is so fleeting. He doesn’t even have time to brace himself.

The agony of the blade pierces him from behind and everything is light until it’s dark.

\--

Now 

_Hi Jack. I’m your mom. I know you’re going to be okay. You are going to be amazing. There’s an angel watching over you, and I love you so much, I love you._

Jack cries with her, and then he cries alone when the video ends, the screen going dark. He runs his fingers over it, as if he could call her through, pull her back to him, reach his arms around her and hold her. Be held by her. Just once.

He picks himself up off the floor, and he packs the flash-drive into his pack with the tablet. He carries it. It will stay with him, this loss, but he will carry it, until it’s a familiar weight. Until he finds peace with it.

He steps out the backdoor and stands on the top stair, looking out onto the dark beach, the lake a still and silent void beyond it. The sky is paling, the gray fading to hint at color. The dawn is coming, but it is not here yet.

There are two graves under the lone pine by the lake shore. They are unmarked and overgrown, untended, hidden by time and earth, but Jack knows that they are there.

Jack kneels by the first and presses his palm into the small, damp pebbles. He doesn’t extend his senses down into the earth, to the quiet and the dark where the remains of the body rest. He keeps his awareness on the surface and tucks his wings tight against his back, bows down over the earth, getting as close to her as he can, trying to remember that this grave isn’t really her, nor this body. Her soul is long gone, moved on.

There isn’t anything left of her here but him.

 _I love you, Jack. You’re going to be so, so good_.

“I love you too,” he whispers, pressing his forehead against the sand.

He rises after a long moment, sniffling, wipes his tears away with the sleeve of his shirt.

The other grave is nearby, and he kneels beside it. But he doesn’t press his hand to the earth, not right away. Not yet.

Instead, he shuts his eyes. Breathes in deeply through his nose, pushing the air down, down, all the way to the base of his lungs. And then he slowly lets the breath go.

Time passes, the sky ever-lightening. When he opens his eyes, they’re glowing softly.

Jack reaches his hand down, down – into the sand, into the dirt, feels until he finds it, that which remained after the fire, and something always remains, a seed, a root, a life – a piece of a rib. He pulls it up, up, out from the earth and into the air, warmer now, and not just from the approaching morning.

His grace flows out from his hand, fits into the molecular grooves of the bone like a needle meeting a record, and the chords of a song thrum inside his own ribcage; another’s grace burned here before, but so did Jack’s, even if only for that brief moment and it _remembers_. Jack feels the heat of his wings, stretching from his back, blazing, their light shining through his eyelids. Anyone looking towards this beach would think a fire had started, or that a star had fallen to earth.

The rib is humming now, and the soul draws close, out from the backdoor, crosses over the faintest imprint of feathers, caught in the gravity of Jack, a sun, celestial light. _Lightbringer,_ something whispers – maybe it’s himself – but it doesn’t scare him, and he stands, glowing like a beacon now, crosses to the bones of the pyre where the ash mixed with sand, mixed with wood, mixed with water and the footprints of animals, dead but not dead, because Jack can _see_ , now – death is another becoming, another life; the composition carries on, like a song passed on. Someone just needs to remember it. To hold it in their heart. To carry it on.

Jack kneels and presses the rib against the earth, gathers the ash where it spread away, calls it back, calls the skin and the bones and the blood, calls it from the sky, the water, the air, the rib hot and burning, his wings outstretched, bright enough to be a sunrise.  

He untangles the love, and the grief, all the prayers, all the hope, all that he’s carried – he’s gathered so much without ever realizing what he was doing, what it was for, and it’s all _love_ – and he spools it out before him, weaving, the lungs and the eyes, the hands, the hair, calls the soul close to him – it cries out, not in terror but in joy, choosing this – it’s _light, light, light,_ stretching up and down, finite and infinite just like Jack himself is, a mess of contradictions and impossibilities and so very, very _alive_.

His hands press against the newly-made chest and the heart leaps to life beneath his palms.

He smiles, and knows that while the work is not done, it is _good._

\--

 

“Dean, calm down, just breathe for a moment,” Sam is saying, but Dean isn’t listening.

He’s storming out of the library, chest tight, and he doesn’t stop until he gets back to the Impala. He doesn’t get in. He just braces himself against the roof, leaning into his arms, and Sam catches up.

“He lied to us, Sam,” Dean says, fingers curling and uncurling. He wants to hit something, but there’s nothing to hit, which is probably for the best because he really shouldn’t be making a scene outside of a small town library. “He straight-up _lied_ to us.” He’s furious, and confused, and all the worry that evaporated when they got Jack’s text comes raining back down.

At least Sam finally has to decency to look peeved now too. 

“Why would he lie to us?” Sam asks, like he can’t quite believe it.

Dean can’t either, but that’s what’s happened. The librarian – who knows Jack, the kid’s in there often enough, as if he living in a place with its own library isn’t good enough, but he’s always accompanied by Dean or Sam – said she hadn’t seen him at all that morning, her kind eyes wide and worried.

“It doesn’t matter _why_ ,” Dean says, even though it does. “What matters is he did it, he _lied_.” The semi-hysterical thought of _I raised him better than that_ is repeating in his mind, but he’ll be damned if he actually says it.

“Maybe he’s just a kid being a kid,” Sam suggests. It’s half-hearted, but it’s something. Something other than the pulsing terror of _what if someone got to him,_ or the deep, long-buried dread of _what if something Lucifer left awakened in Jack_? Or the oldest, sneering fear of, _of course everyone leaves you, Dean_. “Maybe he felt…” Sam trails off.

Dean’s head snaps up from where he’d let it drop, hands braced against the Impala. “Felt what, Sam?” He snaps.

“Maybe he felt stifled.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam doesn’t answer immediately, and so Dean plows on, “You think I’m stifling him?” Sam’s lips thin and he looks away, so Dean repeats, again, with more force, “You think I’m stifling him?”

“I’m just saying that…”

“Spit it out, Sam.”

Sam sighs, rubs a hand over his mouth. “Maybe he deserves a little more freedom. Being cooped up in the bunker all the time, it’s enough to drive anyone a little crazy.”

Dean can’t believe this. “He’s just a kid.”

“He’s also perfectly capable of taking care of himself.”

Dean narrows his eyes, and looks at his brother – really _looks_. “Is this about Jack, Sam, or is it about you?”

“What?” At least he has the nerve to look confused. “No, Dean,” he says, but it’s not convincing.

“You know what, I can’t talk about this right now,” Dean says, because he _can’t_. They’ll have to talk about it, of course, but not now. “We’ll go back to the bunker. Regroup. Figure something out.” He gets into the Impala and flexes his hands on the familiar leather of the steering wheel and waits for Sam to climb in.

There’s a moment of silence before he starts the engine. “We’ll find him, Dean,” Sam reassures, for what must be the fiftieth time this morning. Dean’s faith is at the end of its rope, dangerously close to slipping.

He knows you can’t find someone – especially an angelic someone – who doesn’t want to be found.

He also knows he can’t bear that kind of loss again.

\--

He coughs to try to clear his lungs. He can’t quite manage it, no more than he can manage lifting his head; he can’t tell if he’s too heavy or too light; but he can tell that he has a shape. It’s not much, but it’s what he knows.  

Something makes a sound and he slowly opens his eyes. Lifts them up to the eyes peering down at him. They’re green. Something about that feels familiar.

“I did it with a baby bird, and with a deer once,” a voice says. “Never with a person. And never like this.”

Castiel blinks – because he is Castiel, he remembers that much now, at least – and a face comes into focus. A boy’s face. A boy’s face with a pleased expression, but also one of caution – he looks Castiel over with the same critical eye as a potter searching for cracks in his work.

And Castiel may as well be pottery, for all the sense that the boy’s words make to him, but Castiel nods – or tries to, as best as he can while lying on his side on the ground. The boy makes no move to help him up. He looks like an ordinary human child, and that’s as far as Castiel gets before his heavy eyelids fall shut. Everything feels so muted. So far away.

He coughs, again, body curling inwards, and some distant part of him begins to warn him that he can’t get enough air. He dimly registers the small hand pressed against his forehead before it’s gone, and then it’s pressing against his back. “It will hurt now,” the boy says, and there’s sympathy in his voice, but Castiel doesn’t hear him; pain, sharp and jagged and bright, flares across – no, _through_ – his chest, like a bullet – no, _like a blade_ – and he remembers his death, gasping, hands flying to his chest, expecting to find the heat of blood or leaking grace, but they find neither. Instead, where the wound used to be the feeling of a supernova burns, blinding, consuming, and it radiates from his heart until his body is alight with it, until he’s _alive_ with it.

And then it ebbs away and he’s left to catch his breath on the ground again. The tiny pebbles of the beach dig into his cheek, cold and wet and coarse. There’s sand under his fingernails, sand in his hair, on his feet, like a film of static, and it itches and grates at him. There’s a gentle breeze, it’s cold and clear and fresh, and the air snaps with the scent of the pines.

The sun rises, breaking the night with dawn, and the light reaches out across the lake, overflowing onto the bank and silhouetting him; the shroud of death dissolves like cobwebs in the wind, and he is cast yellow-gold and warming.

Castiel rises and finally floods his lungs with life.

\--

 

“Do you remember who you are?” The boy is asking, and he blinks a few more times to refocus his vision. He’s kneeling, sitting back on his heels, which makes them almost of a height, and he meets the boy’s eyes, which are wide and awash with concern.

“I am Castiel,” he manages, voice rough with disuse. He shivers, and when he wraps his arms around himself he realizes he’s naked.

“I didn’t bring clothes, but I might be able to…” A rustle, and suddenly the boy’s hands are filled with clothes, and he offers them to Castiel. “I think it’s close to what you usually wear,” he says. “There aren’t a lot of pictures of you.”

A white button up, black slacks, a blue tie and a beige trench coat, longer than the one he used to wear. Castiel cautiously gets to his feet. His new muscles shake for a moment, but they hold. “Thank you,” he says to the boy, who he suspects is Kelly’s son. He looks like her: green eyes, light brown hair. She wanted to name him Jack, he remembers. He dresses, except for his socks and shoes, which weren’t conjured; it doesn’t matter – the sandy beach is determined to cling to his feet and he can’t shake it off.

“It’s warmer inside,” the boy who might be Jack says, gesturing towards the house. “Come on.”

Castiel follows, trailing sand up the stairs, into through doorway. It is warmer, and the sunrise streams in softly through the dust of the unkempt windows. Time has passed, then. He wonders how long, and he doesn’t realize that he’s asked it aloud until,

“It’s been five months, one week, and two days,” the boy says.

Not so long a time, and yet such a long time. “Sam and Dean,” Castiel gasps, remember when and where – and with _who_ – he left them. “Are they…?”

“They’re fine,” the boy assures him, and Castiel lets out a sigh of relief. “Lucifer is gone, and he won’t bother anyone from this world again.” Before Castiel has time to ask if Lucifer will be bothering _other_ worlds, the boy continues, “My name is Jack. Jack Kline-Winchester,” he adds, grinning, chin lifted, pride gleaming bright and clear in his green eyes.

 _Ah, so Sam and Dean did raise him, after all_. Castiel feels pride warm his chest. “It’s good to finally meet you, Jack,” Castiel replies. So this is Jack: Kelly’s son, Lucifer’s nephilim, the baby who showed him paradise in a tidal wave of heat and light and power, the child he saved, now a boy who raised him up from his grave. The boy raised by Sam and Dean Winchester.

“And it’s good to meet you!” Jack beams. He flings his arms around him in a hug. Castiel staggers backwards, off-balanced and surprised. He wobbles but remains upright, and returns the hug.

 _Jack Kline-Winchester_ , Castiel muses. It’s a name he should be proud of, Castiel thinks. Castiel, who has no last name, nor any title; he hasn’t been Castiel, Angel of the Lord for some long time now. He is Castiel, just Castiel, and Cas most days. Dean called him brother, one last time before the end, but it was always too much to presume that he could truly call himself Winchester. And it was never in the way he truly wanted.

Jack releases him, steps back and studies him.

Castiel schools his thoughts, wishing he could untangle and quiet the emotions prickling within him. But this is humanity, after all, and again: vulnerable and chaotic and terrifying; it’s all _so much_ ; Castiel’s heart was large for an angel – now, it overflows its brim. Jack’s eyes glint too knowingly for the child he appears to be; he’s the son of an archangel, and so much of his world is the kaleidoscope of celestial energy and intent.

So, when Jack says, “You love him,” he says it as a statement, not as a question, and Castiel doesn’t need to answer.

It can’t be as simple as three words, but it is. It’s woven deep into the colors of his soul; before that, not so very long ago, tangled and bound in the lines of his grace. A tapestry of salvation. Of redemption, of devotion and adoration and affection. He gripped Dean Winchester and raised him from perdition and Dean Winchester turned around, grabbed him, and tugged him down to freedom.

 _The moment Castiel laid a hand on you he was lost!_ Hester had snarled, wings flared and raging, in a time that feels a lifetime ago – no, he knows with certainty now, he was _found_. The heart that beats inside his chest, the soul flickering and flaring behind his ribs, down to the soles of his feet, echoing against the dusty floorboards – yes, Jack resurrected him, grounded his soul in living flesh, but it was growing nearly a decade ago.

Maybe, he has to admit, thinking of the time he flinched at the scream of an innocent child, the long wail of grief of her mother, and before that, long before, when he’d done what he did – when he’d done what was _right_ – that dragged him to that chair, to the sting of a needle behind his eye, even before the Winchesters swept him up into their lives. _A crack, a defect, a spark –_ call it what you will, whatever he’d been cast from had been that which had let a soul take root so hungrily, so eagerly.

Castiel snaps out of the long line of memory at a rustle, and his focus shifts to Jack sitting calmly and patiently at the dust kitchen table with a paper sack. He attempts to swallow around the dry lump in his throat.

“Here,” Jack says, pushing the sack across the table, towards him. The bottom is dark and damp with grease, the familiar logo a sight alone that makes Castiel’s stomach growl, loudly, startling him; he hadn’t realized he was hungry. Jack smiles. “I brought food. And water, too.” He reaches into his backpack and slides a water bottle across too.

“Thank you,” Castiel says, voice rough with disuse. He’s been quiet for a long time. As he reaches to open the bag he finds his hands faintly trembling. Jack takes note, he notices, but the boy doesn’t look concerned about it. The smell of warm food floods out from the bag and Castiel’s mouth waters before he’s even taken a bite. As an angel food was nothing to him but molecules; in his previous time as a human it had been whatever he could get his hands on; now, it’s an overwhelming sensation and it sweeps him up and carries him away – he feels like crying and laughing and screaming; he’s a cacophony of emotions and while part of him revels in all of this life, the other part of him is desperate and clawing for relief.

“Your soul will settle,” Jack reassures, interrupting the silence of his panicked internal flailing. It isn’t much, but Castiel latches onto the promise and some of the turmoil within him quiets for the moment.

He eats, and he drinks, and when he’s done he feels more stable, but the satisfaction of the physical seems to put more strain on the emotional. And he’s tired, he realizes. He could sleep for an age.

“What then?” He asks. What then, after his soul settles? Why did Jack raise him? He doesn’t have anywhere to go; he’s human, and his last moments with Sam and Dean were after his failure to deal with Lucifer, again. Failure after failure after failure – will they be glad to see him? Or will they turn away, rejecting the completely fallen angel that latched onto them? _Dog that think he’s people,_ Rowena’s words, sharp with mocking, come echoing back to him.  

Confusion scrunches Jack’s face and, at last, he looks his age. He tilts his head and squints his eyes, and it’s simultaneously so angelic and so childlike that Castiel almost laughs in the same breath that he almost cries.

“We’re going home,” Jack says, sincerely, and baffled, as if there was nowhere else in the world for Castiel to go.

He hopes that Jack is right. Hopes that he still has a home to go to.

\--

“Okay, thanks Claire. Yeah, we’ll let you know when we find him. Take care.”

Sam sets the mug of coffee down in front of Dean and sits across from him as he ends the call. His brother looks harried, worn and frayed with worry. And while Sam can understand it – Jack’s need to get up and get away – he’s mad, too. Jack’s turned off the GPS on his phone and he’s getting a lecture on _that_ after all the other very stern lectures he’s going to get the minute he comes home.

Because Jack is coming home. That much Sam knows. That much he believes. Out of all the people that haven’t come home… Jack is coming home.

“Claire hasn’t seen him,” Dean says, head in his hands. He doesn’t touch the coffee Sam brought him.

“Jody either,” Sam says. She’d been concerned, when Sam called her, asking if she’d seen Jack, but she shared Sam’s sentiment that Jack will come back home when he’s ready. There’s really no one else they can contact; putting out an alert to their loosely-trusting network of hunters for their half-angel ward is a recipe for disaster. And because Jack is warded from basically all of creation he’s also warded from _them_ , and goddammit they should’ve found a way to make an exception for them to track him.

Then again, they never really thought they’d _lose_ him.

“God, Sam,” Dean says, voice rough. “Where is he?”

 _Somewhere out there_ , Sam wants to say. _Alive_. But what he ends up saying, because it’s the most honest thing he has, is “I don’t know.”

And he watches the light go out of Dean, little by little.

He sends out a prayer of his own, desperate and rough and unrefined, because despite it all somehow he’s the one who isn’t well-versed in praying. _Jack, just come home_.

\-- 

“Dean’s soul is very bright,” Jack says as they step outside of the house. Casual, like he’s commenting on the weather. It distracts Castiel from the nervousness of being a passenger, of returning to the Winchesters.

“Yes,” Castiel agrees, a smile finding its way to his face. _It’s beautiful_ , he remembers. _I won’t be able to see it anymore_.

“It comforted me, as a young child,” Jack says, as if he’s not still a young child. He tilts his head at Castiel, like he’s a book that he can read. “You can see it in his eyes. Sam’s too,” Jack adds.

 _Being human isn’t a loss_ , is what Castiel thinks he’s trying to say. “Thank you, Jack.”    

“You’re welcome,” Jack says. “Are you ready to go?”

Castiel looks around one last time. After everything, it’s still beautiful; the trees gold and red where they’re not evergreen firs, the air crisp and sharp, rolling in off the lake. The sky, blue and nearly cloudless, the rising sun shining over the mountain crests, warm on his face. He can feel that time has passed since he last stood here, looking out over the water, wondering what was to come, can see the changes in the landscape. When he stood here last, he felt a part of something. Now he just feels small.

“I’m ready.”

He expects Jack to grab onto his arm; the boy can’t reach his forehead or shoulder like Castiel did, back when he could still fly. But instead, Jack slips his hand into Castiel’s and holds on.

There’s a moment of absolute silence. And then the world drops out from under him.

\--

 _No wonder Dean always complained about flying,_ Castiel thinks, trying to regain his bearings. Being newly reanimated probably doesn’t help. His eyes squeeze shut as he doubles over, hands on his knees, trying not to spill the contents of his first meal all over the driveway. He feels Jack’s hand press against his forehead. The warmth that flows through him like a summer breeze calms the nausea but does little for his nerves as he takes a few more deep breaths before he straightens, looking at the bunker’s heavy door as if it’s something with teeth.

“Um,” Jack says, and when Castiel looks down at him he looks nervous. “I’m going to be grounded until I’m an old, old man, so uh,” he fiddles his fingers together. “Can we fly in?”

 _I’d like to never fly again_ , is what Castiel thinks, but he bites it back; what he says is, “Sure, Jack.” Jack brightens and reaches for his arm, but Castiel steps back, half-consciously, out of reach. “Could you give me a moment?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you. It’s just…” Somehow, he’s almost winded again, and he trails off, unable to articulate all that’s going on inside of him. He’s a mess of contradictions; he wants nothing more than to go inside, he wants nothing more to stay out here; he’s glad to be human, yet he misses the humming song of his grace in the background. He wants what he doesn’t want and he doesn’t want what he wants, and it’s all so frustratingly _human_ , and he doesn’t even know if Sam and Dean want—

“They missed you, very much,” Jack says, interrupting his thoughts again. _Didn’t Sam and Dean teach this fledgling that mind-reading is rude?_ Castiel thinks, before Jack continues, with such sincerity that Castiel lifts his eyes from the ground and meets the green of Jack’s, sees the truth and the compassion there. “They are still mourning you, Castiel.” Jack turns his head to look at the bunker doorway, towards the brothers inside, and Castiel follows his gaze. “I think they would mourn you the rest of their lives.”

 _Oh_ , Castiel thinks, or maybe he says it, he’s not sure.

There’s movement at his side and he looks down to see Jack extending his small hand to him.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Jack says, offering him a patient smile.

Castiel spares one last glance at the bunker door. It looks less threatening now, somehow; now, it seems to be waiting. Expectant.

He takes a deep breath.

And then he takes Jack’s hand.

\-- 

There’s the unmistakable sound of wings, and Dean rushes towards it, from the library to the map room. And there he is; there’s Jack, standing in the doorway to the hall that’s adjacent to the room, looking a little bit winded but otherwise whole and unharmed. When he sees Dean he brightens. Dean is almost bowled over by relief, and on its heels rushes in the sternness, the demand to know _where,_ and _why,_ and _do you have any idea what the hell you just put me through?_

“ _Jack Robert Kline-Winchester!_ ” Dean’s voice is stone-hard, heavy-laced with anger born of worry. “Where the _f_ — where the _hell_ , where— ” he sputters, striding to Jack, towering and trembling; Jack doesn’t flinch; instead, he calmly glances behind himself and takes a step forward and then to the side, clearing the doorway. “Where have you—”

Dean’s voice stops the same time his feet do when he sees who steps into the room after Jack. He’s rooted in place; the ground is falling away beneath him and if he takes another step he’s going to plummet to the center of the earth and shatter, and then he’s going to wake up and leave this terrible, beautiful dream and it’s going to _hurt_ ; he doesn’t want it all to disappear, but he knows it all will because it’s _impossible_ , so he keeps his eyes wide and open until they sting—

\--

Castiel stands before Dean Winchester, his freshly human heart thudding against the confines of his chest; he fears it will burst from him and fall to the ground, tumble out and roll away, leaving a vulnerable chasm straight to the core of him.

“Hello, Dea—”

\--

Dean finds his feet unfrozen and carrying him that short distance that is far too far between him and Castiel – Castiel, returned again, alive again, _how can this be_ but he doesn’t really care about that, all Dean cares about is that he can’t be sure this isn’t some apparition or cruel illusion until he gets his arms around him, and then his arms _are_ around him, holding fast and tight, and Castiel is _real_ and _solid_ and _alive._

“Hey Cas,” he chokes out, returning their familiar call-and-response over Castiel’s shoulder, and he thought he’d never say it again, not since he said goodbye—

\--

He’s startled by Dean’s near-bruising embrace, but only for the moment before the relief comes crashing down upon him like a wave. Castiel’s heart has been beating for a little while now, but it’s here within the firmness of Dean’s embrace that he actually _knows_ he’s alive again. He lifts his own arms and doesn’t so much return the embrace as he takes it, holds it – holds _Dean_ – as closely and as tightly as Dean holds onto him.

\-- 

Sam, who raced into the room after Dean, jaw dropping in awe when Castiel stepped forward, waits for them to have this moment all their own, heart brimming. He rests his hand on Jack’s shoulder; Jack who is beaming, crackling with joy and pride. The tears in his eyes well and overflow and he doesn’t bother wiping them away.

Castiel looks at him over Dean’s shoulder, eyes wet and shining. Sam squeezes Jack’s shoulder – _thank you, thank you, thank you_ – and steps forward.

He wraps his arms around them both, tucking Castiel in between himself and Dean. Relief and protectiveness and pure, shining happiness flood through him; all three of them are a dazzling mess of emotions and Sam has to swallow around his heart, so buoyant as it is. Of all the things they’ve gone up against and beaten – the apocalypse, twice, brainwashing and demons and curses and their own clumsy hearts – this might just be the most miraculous victory.    

\-- 

Dean frowns and can’t help the disgruntled sound he makes when Castiel starts moving, trying to extricate himself from their embrace – he still can’t quite believe that this is real and he’s hesitant to let Castiel go. Dean loosens his grip a little, and he only does that after Sam reluctantly pulls back, and Castiel takes a half-step backwards, as that’s as far as Dean is going to allow him to go, because any farther and he’ll have to drop his hands from Castiel’s shoulders, and he isn’t ready for that loss of contact.

Castiel is looking back and forth between him and Sam, his eyes brimming and his face a desperate mix of emotions, raw, and Dean picks up anxiety and guilt from among them and feels his mending heart aches; at one point he would’ve demanded the apology he sees forming but he doesn’t care about that now, how could he care about that, when he’s _here_ and _alive_ and _okay_.

\-- 

Castiel doesn’t want this to end but he has to step back – not very far, though, apparently; Dean isn’t letting him go, hands gripped tight and then tighter on his shoulders – because he has to get the words out, he has to make things right, because things weren’t right when he left—

“Dean, Sam, I’m sorry, I am so _sor_ —”

“Hey. Hey.” Dean’s voice is firm and he tugs Castiel back in towards himself; Sam closes the distance that was made and another pair of arms brackets his body, and Castiel can’t resist; he isn’t strong enough to refuse this and he lets himself be held tightly again. He can feel the shudder-shake of Dean’s breath and his heart skip-jump beating through his own chest, feels the solid rumble of Dean’s voice as he says, “There is nothing to be sorry for. You’re back, Cas, you’re – you’re _home_.”

Castiel draws in a breath and it comes back out shaky and wet; it’s a sob, he realizes; he’s starting to sob and he can’t control it; he’s shaking and clinging to them for dear life, but they’re clinging to him too; even as his knees go weak, he’s supported. Held.

“It’s okay, Cas, it’s okay.” Sam says, tightening his grip as Dean does the same. “We’ve got you. It’s okay.”

“You’re home,” Dean says, again, the word ringing through Castiel as he buries his face in Dean’s shoulder, his mind beginning to wrap around it, starting to believe it, his soul reaching out to it, holding onto it, _home_ , _home, home._

_I’m home._

\--

Jack opens his wings wide, fans out every feather from base to wing-tip and stretches them into the crackling love. He did it – he did this, this _good_ thing – and it catches and ignites and blazes in the center of him, all that power and purpose and goodness; he feels it shoot down to the molten, spinning core of the earth and bounce back, overjoyed; he feels it launch from the crown of his head, bolt through space to the sun, and the hymnal-hum of space and light sings back to him.

 _Lightbringer,_ creation cries out, greeting, welcoming, rejoicing in that which has been set right.

He understands it now.

He welcomes it.

_I’m home, too._

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Pirouette" by Audre Lorde
> 
> Part Two is much shorter and it is on its way, likely around Thanksgiving (you can look for updates on [tumblr](https://honeyed-wings.tumblr.com/)), and I do have an epilogue planned. I wanted to get Part One out and into the world because I _need_ to start Season 13. Every day is an exercise of avoiding spoilers like dodging arrows in one of those booby-trapped hallways. And as much as I love my baby/child Jack, I can't wait to meet the actual canon Jack this season. I'm just excited to start Season 13 in general.
> 
> After I take a nap.


End file.
